Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to their emergency care plan announced on 30 January, how many of the 800 new ambulances will be (1) replacing existing ambulances, or (2) extra vehicles on the road.

The Department published its Delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services on 30 January 2023 and set out that ‘over 800 new ambulances are expected to be available during 2023/24, with the majority expected to be available ahead of winter, as part of ongoing improvement and replacement of our fleet, including 100 new specialist mental health response vehicles’. A copy of the delivery plan is attached.

As always there is a churn of old vehicles being taken off the road, but we still expect a significant increase in the overall size of the fleet of roughly 10% of the current fleet, equivalent to approximately 350 new vehicles, in addition to 100 new mental health ambulances.