NHS hospitals are installing plug sockets and emergency call bells in corridors as they “could not avoid using these spaces,” the health safety watchdog warned today.

The Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) said hospitals “may have no choice” but to use these spaces and called for health leaders and trusts to work together to “systematically address” risks.

It called for a “nationally agreed definition” of so-called temporary care environments, such as corridors, offices and storerooms, along with a better understanding of how and when they are used in the NHS.

The watchdog said that “constant” patient flow issues led to it observing corridor care being used regularly in all 13 hospitals it visited between August and December 2025.

President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine Dr Ian Higginson said: “What’s most alarming is that there is nothing shocking about the findings — storerooms being converted to put patients in, difficulties monitoring patients, staff debating who is ‘less sick’ to be put in a corridor, and clinicians experiencing burnout and fatigue because of the number of patients being cared for in spaces that were never designed to deliver care in.”

He said that Health Secretary Wes Streeting promising to eradicate corridor care by 2029 last month shows “the government knows it’s happening, it knows the harm being caused — so where is the action and urgency to end it, rather than allowing the system to adapt to tolerate it?”

Keep Our NHS Public co-chair Dr John Puntis said: “The HSSIB report into the shameful situation with corridor care is now the fourth one on this devastating probem in the last 12 months.

“In January 2025, Streeting said to parliament: “I will not accept or tolerate patients being treated in corridors” but a year later the lack of urgency in finding solutions is clearly evident.

“Short term improvement could come quickly if closed beds were to be re-opened and local authorities funded to provide more community support.“

The Department of Health and Social Care said: “No-one should receive care in a corridor — the situation we inherited is unacceptable and undignified, and we are determined to end it.”