Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help reduce waiting times in ambulance and emergency departments in Yorkshire.

Our Delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services sets out the range of measures being taken to reduce ambulance and emergency department waiting times, including in Yorkshire.

Backed by £1 billion of dedicated funding, we delivered 5,000 additional core hospital beds in 2023/24 and will maintain this capacity expansion in 2024/25. Ambulance trusts received £200 million of additional funding in 2023/24 to increase deployed hours and reduce response times, which will also be maintained this year.

Since we published our plan there have been significant improvements in emergency care performance, including in Yorkshire. In 2023/24, average Category 2 ambulance response times in Yorkshire were over nine minutes faster compared to the previous year, a reduction of 23%, and performance against the four-hour standard for accident and emergency care improved in each integrated care board area in Yorkshire.

The NHS Planning Guidance, published in March, commits to further improvements in emergency care performance in 2024/25, with more information available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/operational-planning-and-contracting/