Ambulance Services: Standards
(asked on 5th March 2026) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information his Department holds on the average ambulance waiting times for (a) Category 1, (b) Category 2, (c) Category 3 and (d) Category 4 incidents for each region of the UK.
NHS England publishes monthly data on ambulance response times for England as part of the Ambulance Quality Indicators publication. The publication can be found at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ambulance-quality-indicators/
The following table shows latest published performance data for ambulance response times in England, broken down by ambulance category:
Ambulance category | Performance standard | Latest published performance (January 2026) |
C1 average | 7 minutes | 8:08 |
C1 90th centile | 15 minutes | 14:27 |
C2 average | 18 minutes | 35:04 |
C2 90th centile | 40 minutes | 1:13:53 |
C3 90th centile | 2 hours | 5:02:09 |
C4 90th centile | 3 hours | 6:37:43 |
Ambulance response times for Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland are published by their own health services respectively and can be found online. The response time categories and thresholds differ from those used in England, and as such direct comparisons cannot be made. The separate publications for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are available, respectively, at the following three links:
https://www.scottishambulance.com/our-board/board-papers/
https://jcc.nhs.wales/insighthub/asi/
https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/articles/emergency-care-and-ambulance-statistics