Younger generations are significantly less satisfied with the NHS than their older counterparts, a major new survey has revealed, despite an overall uptick in public approval for the first time since the pandemic.
The latest British Social Attitudes Survey highlighted "sharp" political divisions, with Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters expressing greater satisfaction compared to those backing Reform UK.
While overall satisfaction has seen its first increase since before the Covid-19 pandemic, experts caution that these improvements are "fragile," noting that the public remains largely "unhappy" with the service in 2025.
This comes as Health Secretary Wes Streeting has outlined plans to address several "underperforming" NHS trusts.
Public satisfaction with the NHS dipped to a record low in 2024, with some 21% of people satisfied with the health service.
The latest survey, which ran between August and October last year, found this rose by five percentage points to 26%.
But when people were asked about specific services, including A&E, GPs and dentistry, there were no significant changes in satisfaction year-on-year.
Experts said the results were “positive” but that there was “a long way to go” after some 16% said they thought the standard of NHS care would improve in the next five years.
Mr Streeting said: “When this government came to office, I said that, while the NHS was broken, it wasn’t beaten. Patients are beginning to feel the change and the NHS is showing that things can get better.
“The biggest drop in dissatisfaction since 1998 doesn’t happen by accident. It is thanks to the government’s investment and modernisation – all of which has been hard fought but is now delivering results.
“Waiting lists are the lowest they’ve been in three years, more patients in A&E are seen within four hours than for four years, and ambulance response times are the fastest for five years.
“The NHS is on the road to recovery, but there’s a lot of road ahead. My foot is pressing down on the accelerator and I won’t stop until the job is done.”
Analysis of the figures by The King’s Fund and the Nuffield Trust health think tanks revealed that 20% of people under-35 said they were satisfied with NHS compared with more than a third (35%) of people 65 and over.
Experts urged ministers to “pay attention” to differences seen across age groups.
The analysis also found differences with satisfaction across supporters of different political parties, with one-in-five (20%) Reform UK supporters saying they were satisfied with the NHS compared with 33% of Labour voters and 35% of Liberal Democrat supporters.
People in Wales were also less likely to report being satisfied compared with the average, with 18% reporting satisfaction.
Most people agreed that they were in favour of the founding principles of the NHS – that it should be free of charge and primarily funded through taxes.
Overall, 74% said the NHS should be available to everyone. But this sentiment showed political divide, with 68% of Labour voters saying the service should “definitely” be available to everyone compared with 45% of Conservative voters and 30% of Reform UK supporters.
The survey also revealed that 14% of people were satisfied with social care while 49% said they were “very” or “quite dissatisfied” with social care.
Commenting on the report, Bea Taylor, fellow at the Nuffield Trust, said: “The boost in satisfaction with the NHS has not been felt equally across age groups.
“A stark generational divide remains, with older people still most likely to be optimistic about the health service.
“The Government and NHS leaders should pay particular attention to figuring out what could improve younger people’s perceptions of the service given this is now a longstanding trend.”
She said: “It’s becoming more common for political figures to seriously mull over the possibility of changing the funding model of the NHS, but these survey results prove that there just isn’t public appetite for such a drastic change.
“Strong support for the principles that the NHS should be funded through taxation and free at the point of use has endured. However, we found a close association between belief that immigration is bad for the economy and doubting whether the NHS should be ‘available to everyone’.”
Dan Wellings, senior fellow at The King’s Fund, said: “The rise in public satisfaction will be welcome relief for an NHS that has seen satisfaction plummet in recent years.
“But whether this marks the start of a genuine recovery or is just brief respite remains an open question. Much will depend on how quickly the Government can improve access to care.”
Mark Dayan, head of public affairs at the Nuffield Trust, said that the proportion of people satisfied with the NHS was “only about a quarter of the population”, indicating that the public was still “very unhappy”.
He said: “These are still numbers that you would have thought were catastrophic in the 2010s, they’re still worse than they were even during the ’90s, a period when the public was widely perceived to be very unhappy about the NHS.
“So there is a very, very long way to go.”
Sir James Mackey, chief executive of NHS England, said the findings were “really encouraging and testimony” after staff had worked to drive down waiting lists, cut A&E waiting times and try and make it easier for patients to contact their GP.
He said: “However, we’ve still got a long way to go: while I’m incredibly proud of how teams up and down the country are working hard to make sure patients get the services they want and need, there is a huge amount of work ahead of us to get the NHS back to the levels of service our public rightly expect.
“None of us can be complacent, but today’s data shows we are on the right track.”
The survey, conducted by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), included more than 3,400 people from England, Scotland and Wales giving their views on the NHS and social care satisfaction and 1,460 people giving views about their satisfaction with specific NHS services, as well as their views on NHS priorities, principles and funding.
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