Helpline annual report: April 1st 2025 – March 31st 2026
Helpline highlights
Between April 1st 2025 - March 31st 2026, we received we received 202 enquiries to our helpline. Enquiries were mostly a combination of feedback through our website (50%), emails (26%), phone call messages (16%) and emails forwarded to us from Healthwatch England and other Healthwatch in Sussex (4%) (West Sussex and East Sussex).
The majority of people contacting the helpline were:
- Raising a concern or negative experiences about a service (127 people)
- Requesting information (23 people)
- Making compliments about a service (40 people)
- Raising formal complaints (12 people).
The five leading areas of concerns and related complaints raised, in descending order were:
- Poor hospital care including ambulance waiting times, poor experiences at A&E, and poor communication of cancelled appointments (32 people)
- Poor quality of care from a GP (25 people)
- Poor access to a GP appointment, including waiting times for appointments (12 people)
- Poor access to Hospital appointments (12 people)
- Poor dental care (10 people).
Comparison overview
Compared to 2024-25, the top four concerns were similar, with poor hospital care and poor GP care persisting as the main areas of concern. Concerns about access to GP appointments and poor dental care were also raised. The main area of difference were concerns raised about access to hospital appointments which was more evident in 2025-2026.
As a positive outcome from using the helpline, (78%) said it was ‘somewhat helpful’, ‘very helpful’ or ‘extremely helpful’ and a total of 82 people were signposted for further advice and support. 38% or 33 people were considered to be seldom heard (see full report for definition).
