NHS Talking Therapies waiting times by region, June 2026

The headline: 85.2% seen within six weeks

In June 2026, 158,140 people were referred to NHS Talking Therapies in England and 109,209 started treatment. Of those who finished a course of treatment, 85.2% had waited six weeks or less for their first session and 97.7% had waited 18 weeks or less. The median wait to a first session was 22 days. On the face of it, the service is meeting its access standard comfortably.

Those figures measure the wait to a first treatment appointment, which for most people is a short, low-intensity contact: a guided self-help session or a telephone assessment. Two other waits matter more to anyone who needs actual therapy, and neither appears in the headline.

The second wait: what happens after the first appointment

After a first session, 63.2% of people waited more than 28 days for their second, and 23.3% waited more than 90 days. That is close to one in four people waiting three months or more between their first and second appointment, after the six-week clock has stopped.

The high-intensity wait: 72 days on average

Where an assessment leads to high-intensity therapy (one-to-one CBT, EMDR, counselling for depression, interpersonal therapy), the mean wait from assessment to the first high-intensity session was 72 days in June 2026. Only 43.0% started within 28 days and 72.7% within 90. For low-intensity work the mean wait was 9 days. People who start with low-intensity support and are then stepped up to high-intensity therapy waited a mean of 84 days for that to happen.

Waiting times by NHS region

London had the highest share of people seen within six weeks (90.0%); Midlands the lowest (80.0%). The regional spread on the six-week measure is narrow. The spread on the high-intensity wait and the second wait is much wider, which is where local differences show.

Local areas: fastest and slowest to a first session

Sub-ICB areas with at least 200 people starting treatment in the month.

Fastest

Slowest

Local areas: longest waits for high-intensity therapy

Local areas: longest second waits

What else the data shows

• Most NHS therapy is now delivered remotely. In June 2026 there were 205,728 video appointments and 238,715 telephone appointments against 116,768 face-to-face. Video alone accounted for 37% of appointments across those three channels.
• A third of referrals end before treatment. 36.6% of referrals that closed in the month ended before any treatment, and a further 27.2% after a single session. 36.2% finished a course of treatment.
• A course of treatment is short. The median number of sessions for people who finished treatment was 7; for CBT the mean was 7.6.
• Outcomes for those who complete are reasonable. 50.6% of people who finished treatment met the recovery criteria and 68.5% showed reliable improvement.

Six-week performance over the last year, England

What this means if you are waiting

The six-week standard tells you when the NHS will first make contact, not when therapy will start. If you have been assessed and told you need high-intensity therapy, a wait of two to three months from that point is typical, and longer in some areas. If you are already in the system, ask your service where you sit on the high-intensity list and whether a different modality or a different provider in the same area has a shorter wait; services can and do transfer people.

Private therapy is the other route, and it is worth being clear-eyed about what it costs and what you get. Our guide to therapy costs in the UK sets out the going rates. At The Online Psychologists, sessions with an HCPC-registered clinical psychologist are £130 for 50 minutes, delivered by video across the UK, with no GP referral and no waiting list; most people start within a week. Bupa, AXA, Aviva, Cigna, Vitality, WPA and Healix members are usually covered. If you are not sure whether you need a clinical psychologist or a counsellor, this explainer covers the difference.

Methodology

• Source: NHS England, NHS Talking Therapies for anxiety and depression, monthly statistics, performance June 2026 (published 13 August 2026). Files used: the monthly activity and performance CSV and the key-measures time series CSV.
• Measures: seen within 6 and 18 weeks (M053, M055; denominators are people who finished a course of treatment in the month); median wait to first treatment (M049); mean wait from assessment to first high-intensity session (M347) and share within 28 and 90 days (M362, M364); mean wait from assessment to first low-intensity session (M348); step-up wait (M350); waits between first and second treatment (M124, M126); referrals (M001); people accessing services (M031); appointment counts by consultation medium (M1001, M1002, M1018); referral outcomes (M077 to M079); sessions (M142, M113); recovery and reliable improvement (M192, M186).
• Regions are NHS England commissioning regions. Local areas are sub-ICB locations as recorded by NHS England; areas with fewer than 200 people starting treatment in the month are excluded from the local tables to avoid small-number noise. Values suppressed by NHS England for small numbers are treated as missing.
• Limits: these are monthly snapshots and single months can be volatile for smaller areas. NHS England flags a data-quality issue with the mean days between treatments measure (M351), which is not used here. Waits are measured from referral or assessment, not from the point someone first sought help.
• Refresh: regenerated from the latest release by scripts/seo/research-nhs-waits.py in our site repository; the page states the data month at the top.

Cite this as: The Online Psychologists (2026). NHS Talking Therapies waiting times by region, June 2026 data. https://www.theonlinepsychologists.co.uk/research/nhs-talking-therapies-waiting-times/

Page generated 8 September 2026. Analysis by The Online Psychologists; clinical interpretation is the practice’s own and is not endorsed by NHS England.