Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of closures of community ambulance stations on people living in rural areas.

No specific assessment has been made by the Department. Decisions on the provision of local services, including the location of ambulance stations, are a matter for local National Health Service commissioners working with NHS providers and must be taken in the best interests of patients and the local population.

Ambulance trusts will regularly meet with their commissioners to discuss performance within their localities including ambulance response times.

We recognise the significant pressure the ambulance service is facing which is why we published our Delivery Plan for Recovering Urgent and Emergency Care Services. This aims to deliver one of the fastest and longest sustained improvements in waiting times in the NHS's history, with an ambition to reduce Category 2 response times to 30 minutes on average this year, with further improvements down towards pre-pandemic levels next year.