NHS waiting times: Man left unable to do basic tasks after surgery postponements

• Watch Nick Smith's report

A man from Bristol says the postponement of his hip replacement has left him unable to perform the most basic of tasks.

Phillip Williams, from Bristol, is the sole carer for his wife who is paraplegic but he had his hip replacement cancelled twice because of the pandemic.

He says his pain is too intense for him to endure and now means he struggles to do the simplest of tasks - but he still feels guilty about using the NHS’s services.

He said: "It’s scary times. Scary.

"Because of Covid and the impact on the NHS, it doesn’t feel right if I’m ringing up complaining because those guys are doing the best they can. How can you complain?"

The knock-on-effect of the pandemic means waiting times for treatments are now piling up.

Back in the early stages on the pandemic, the NHS had a crisis on its hands, the like of which it had never seen before.

Resources were diverted to battling Covid which meant surgeries classed as "non-essential" were put on the backburner.

It means thousands of people like Phillip have been left waiting on life-changing operations.

North Bristol NHS Trust told ITV News it is sorry for the delays to Phillip due to the impact of Covid-19 and is working to restore services to pre-Covid levels.

But there are claims it may take more than three years to get back to pre-pandemic waiting times for some treatments.

Health Secretary, Sajid Javid MP, is now in charge of trying to speed up that process.

He said: "Of course, it is daunting. The work that we've done that suggests that waiting lists will grow sadly, before they get better.

"And the reason for that, by the way is because we estimate there's some seven million people that in normal times would have come forward for help from the NHS.

"But they didn't they stayed away because they were asked to protect the NHS and everyone understands that they did the right thing."