The NHS has “never seen this level of demand”, one expert has said.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said that the health service is in a “terrible situation” where it is facing “more demand than we can deal with”.

He said that the next Prime Minister should have a “realism reset” and set out how to deal with the “current crisis”.

I speak to health leaders every day and they all say that they've never seen this level of demand

Mr Taylor told Times Radio that pressures in the system were leading to some appointments being cancelled.

And the health service is “often not able to provide the level of service that we want to provide”.

He said: “Unfortunately, given the kinds of pressures that the health service is under, we are having to see appointments cancelled.

“And people who are experiencing health services know that very often we’re not able to provide the level of service that we want to provide.

“And what that reflects is unprecedented level of demand.

“I speak to health leaders every day and they all say that they’ve never seen this level of demand – that’s not just in hospitals, that’s community services, mental health services, primary care.

“We know that it can be difficult to see your GP but yet, GPs are seeing more people now than they saw before the Covid pandemic.”

He added that ambulance response times were one of the “risks in the system” at the moment, adding: “We also know that people, many people, who are sick in the community waiting for operations, for example, and that’s one of the reasons people end up in the emergency department because they get to the stage where they can’t cope.

“So the problem is that pressures in in one part of the system drive pressure in others.

“There’s also the issue of people in hospital that don’t need to be in hospital because we don’t have the social care provision.”

Mr Taylor added: “We have a new Prime Minister arriving in a few days’ time and it’s really important that we have a realism reset: that we understand what’s going on in the health care system; that we take the short term measures we need to take to alleviate the current crisis and looking towards what could be a very challenging winter.

“But also, we do the things that we need to do over the medium term to get out of the terrible situation where we just have more demand that we can deal with.”