Ambulance Services: North West

(asked on 5th January 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the Answer of 24 January 2017 to Question 59987 and pursuant to the Answer of 24 October 2017 to Question 106993, what steps his Department has taken on the provision of ambulance services as part of NHS planning arrangements for winter 2017-18 and operational resilience planning to ensure the health and social care system is adequately prepared to cope with winter pressures in the North West; and what the avergage waiting times were for ambulances in that region on each day between 23 December 2017 and 2 January 2018 inclusive.


Answered by
Steve Barclay Portrait
Steve Barclay
Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
This question was answered on 10th January 2018

This year the National Health Service was better prepared than ever before to meet the challenges of winter.

The NHS and the Department undertake rigorous planning each year, putting in place robust plans to ensure resilience throughout the winter period. This planning includes ambulance trusts. Additionally, put in place for this year is a revised escalation framework encompassing all levels of the system – local, regional and national – to ensure a greater standardisation of response to winter pressures. This is overseen by the newly formed, clinically led, National Emergency Pressures Panel.

NHS England publishes ambulance waiting time data on a monthly basis, and will publish data for the month of December 2017 on Thursday 11 January 2018. The data will be available online at the following website:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ae-waiting-times-and-activity/

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