Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans the Government has to regulate independent ambulance services.

NHS Improvement regulates all independent providers of National Health Service-funded care, including ambulance services, unless they are exempt for the following reasons:

- the providers are not required to register with the Care Quality Commission (CQC);

- the providers are small providers of NHS-funded healthcare services whose annual turnover from providing NHS services is less than £10 million;

- they are providers of primary medical and dental services;

- they are providers of NHS continuing healthcare and NHS-funded nursing care; or

- the provider is an NHS trust which will only be licensed when they are authorised as an NHS foundation trust.

All independent providers of ambulance services must be registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and satisfy their registration requirements. As part of this work the CQC are inspecting all independent ambulance services by the end of March 2018, and are already sharing findings from these inspections with the sector in order to drive improvement. We are working closely with the CQC and will consider any recommendations they make.

Where an independent ambulance provider is working on behalf of an NHS ambulance trust the independent provider will also be subject to continuous monitoring by the trust, to ensure they are delivering to the same rigorous safety and quality standards and inspections as NHS ambulance services.