Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what guidance his Department provides to ambulance services on directing patients to alternative services where an ambulance conveyance to hospital is not required.

On 6 June 2025, we published our Urgent and Emergency Care Delivery Plan for 2025/26, and on 25 October 2025 we published the Medium-Term Planning Framework.

To support ambulance services with increased decision making and capability, NHS England in 2025/26 has published a new ambulance commissioning specification for integrated care boards that will drive consistency across England in the commissioning of ambulance services, including actions which support patients to access the care they need in the community.

Included in these frameworks was guidance on impactful interventions such as Hear and Treat and clinical navigation of Category 3 and 4 calls so they are validated and where appropriate triaged in ambulance control centres, or in a Single Points of Access to direct patients to alternative healthcare provision in the community such as Urgent Treatment Centres.