On the NHS’s 75th anniversary, there is enduring public support for the NHS’s founding principles

The survey of 1,555 adults aged 16+ in England, Wales and Northern Ireland was carried out on the Ipsos UK KnowledgePanel on behalf of NHS Confederation.

The headline findings are:

• There remains a high level of support for the founding principles of the NHS. A majority agree that the NHS should provide a comprehensive service available to all (87%), remain free at the point of delivery (also 87%) and be funded primarily via taxation (83%).
• When it comes to the NHS budget, 7 in 10 (69%) do not think that the NHS receives enough funding. Six in ten (61%) think the NHS needs a combination of more funding and big changes to the way in which it runs and provides services in order to improve.  
• Reflecting the areas of most concern at present, the public want the NHS to prioritise increasing the number of staff working in the NHS (45%) and improving staff wellbeing (30%), alongside reducing waiting times for core services: 36% want the NHS to prioritise improving waiting times for A&E, 35% want to see improving waiting times for routine services such as diagnostic tests or operations and 32% making it easier to get face-to-face GP appointments.   
• When presented with potential actions that the NHS could take to address the challenges it is facing, the actions the public think will most help are increasing capacity in social care settings so that people can leave hospital sooner and developing a workforce plan for the number and types of staff the NHS will need to deliver services in the future.¹
• With waiting lists rising, this has become a key concern for the public. The public attribute the elective care backlog to a mix of factors: a lack of staff (49%) and space in social care settings (43%), as well as the cancellation of routine treatment and care during the pandemic (42%), and there not being enough funding for the NHS (40%).

To download the slides, please visit the NHS Confederation website here.

Technical note: 

• Ipsos carried out the survey on behalf of NHS Confederation, online via the Ipsos UK KnowledgePanel (a random probability online panel), between 30 March and 5 April 2023.
• The results are based on 1,555 adults aged 16 and over in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, representing a response rate of 52%.
• The sample was stratified by nation and education.
• A weighting spec was applied to the data in line with the target sample profile; this included one which corrected for unequal probabilities of selection of household members (to account for two members who may have been selected from one household), and weights for region, an interlocked variable of Gender by Age, Education, Ethnicity, Index of Multiple Deprivation (quintiles), and number of adults in the household. 

¹ These findings are based on a MaxDiff exercise prioritisation exercise, which sorts through a wide number of options to establish what people see as most/least important. Respondents were shown four considerations on their screen and asked to rate which would most help and least help the NHS. The task was repeated between six and seven times with different combinations, and the results were then combined with each of the eleven considerations then scored on a scale on 0 to 100. The scores are not percentages. They show the importance on a scale of 0-100: the higher the score, the more helpful an item is considered for addressing the challenges the NHS faces. The scores are relative to each other so this can be used to draw conclusions about how important items are in relation to each other. Increasing capacity in social care so that people who need social care can leave hospital when they are ready is seen as most helpful of the options given for addressing the challenges the NHS faces (70), followed by developing a plan for the number of NHS staff and types of skills needed to deliver services in the future (54) and introducing a seven-day work week for all parts of the NHS, meaning appointments are offered at a wider range of dates and times, including at weekends (52).