FOI 25-058 Private Ambulances for 23/24 period
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 25-058 Private Ambulances for 23/24 period
- Request Date
- 03 Feb 2025
- Response Date
- 25 Feb 2025
- Information Requested
Dear Freedom of Information Officer, I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 regarding your Trust’s use of ambulance and other incident response services provided by private organisations. For the 2023/24 financial year, please could you provide:
The average response time to an incident by private services (please could you break this down by Category of Incident).
How much money was spent on private services providing an ambulance service or incident response service, by your Trust.
For each separate contract made or held with a private company providing an ambulance service or incident response service, please provide: i) the cost of the contract, ii) the name of the company involved, iii) the performance indicators in the commissioning contract iv) the number of incidents total the private company attended
- Response
The Scottish Ambulance Service no longer has contracts with Private Ambulance providers.
For the 23/24 financial year:
Q1 - The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold the information in a way that allows us to report on average response times by attending vehicle. Aprivate ambulance may not be the first vehicle on scene and therefore may not give a true representation of the response time to the incident. It is for this reason we have applied section 17 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, as information not held.
Q2 – The spend for the British Red Cross for the 23/34 period was £736,449.89. It is important to note this figure is inclusive of emergency incidents and scheduled care (patient transport).
Incidents attended for the 23/24 period were, Emergency Calls – 13; HCP (Health Care Professional) Scheduled – 2727; Urgent Calls – 0; Routine – 561.
HCP Scheduled is defined by requests to attend incidents received from other Health Care Professionals. Routine calls are defined as calls that we need to attend that are a low acuity and don't have a time specified. Emergency calls have been provided for reference.
It is important to note
The British Red Cross may attend an emergency incident in one of the following capacities:
- As a patient transport crew where a patient has been assessed by a clinician as suitable for transport to hospital by this type of resource. These incidents would be attended under normal driving conditions (i.e. no lights and sirens).
- As a first responder similar to the role of our Community First Responder scheme. Working in this capacity the Red Cross crew will be backed up by a Scottish Ambulance Service crew. These incidents would be attended by red cross under normal driving conditions (i.e. no lights and sirens).
