Ambulance Services: Standards
(asked on 8th January 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of ambulance waiting times over the 2024-25 Christmas and new year period.
Ambulance response times have been below the high standards that patients should expect in recent years. The Government has committed to supporting the National Health Service to improve performance and achieve the standards set out in the NHS Constitution, including ambulance response times.
The following table shows the national ambulance response time performance in December 2024 for Category 1, 2, 3 and 4 incidents, in hours, minutes and seconds:
Category of incident | December 2024 national average | NHS constitution standard |
Category 1 – average response time | 00:08:40 | 00:07:00 |
Category 1 – 90th centile response time | 00:15:25 | 00:15:00 |
Category 2 – average response time | 00:47:26 | 00:18:00 |
Category 2 – 90th centile response time | 01:41:40 | 00:40:00 |
Category 3 – 90th centile response time | 07:21:03 | 02:00:00 |
Category 4 – 90th centile response time | 08:15:44 | 03:00:00 |
Source: NHS England Ambulance Quality Indicators (https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ambulance-quality-indicators/)