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 with the South Central Ambulance Service to reduce ambulance wait times for people in Newbury constituency.

The Government recognises that in recent years ambulance response times have not met the high standards patients should expect.

We are determined to turn things around and have taken serious steps to achieve this. Our Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2025/26, backed by almost £450 million of capital investment, commits to reducing ambulance response times for Category 2 incidents to 30 minutes on average this year. The South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SCAS) has a dedicated Category 2 performance team driving improvements through targeted interventions.

We have already seen improvements in ambulance response times in SCAS, which serves Newbury. The latest NHS performance figures for SCAS show that Category 2 incidents were responded to in 31 minutes 54 seconds on average, over six minutes faster the same month last year.