Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help tackle ambulance handover delays at Royal Stoke University Hospital.

NHS England and Improvement (NHSEI) advises that University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust (UHNM) have a range of measures in place to improve handover delays at Royal Stoke Hospital. These include the safe cohorting of patients which releases other crews to respond to new calls, direct referral of patients to Same Day Emergency Care, and the placement of Hospital Ambulance Liaison Officers to improve the flow of patients and reduce handover delays.

Work by the West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) to improve response times in East Staffordshire includes the introduction of a Clinical Validation Team comprising advanced paramedics working in control rooms, work to increase the proportion of calls closed over the phone or on scene, and maximising the use of alternative pathways to emergency departments. These interventions help to free up ambulance resource to respond to incoming calls more quickly, improving response times. There are also a range of national measures are in place, including continuous central monitoring and support from the National Ambulance Coordination Centre, and NHSEI has allocated £150 million of additional system funding for ambulance service pressures in 2022/23, supporting improvements to response times through additional call handler recruitment, retention, and other funding pressures.

No such assessment will be made. Emergency service co-responding is a matter for local emergency services.