FOI 25-059 CFR'S and Charities

Freedom of Information Request

Reference
FOI 25-059 CFR'S and Charities
Request Date
03 Feb 2025
Response Date
27 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 volunteers and charities. For the 2023/24 financial year, please could you provide:  

  1. Regarding volunteers for your Trust, including Community First Responders:  
  1. The average response time to an incident by volunteers (please could you break this down by Category of Incident).  
  1. The number of incidents total attended by volunteers.  
  1. The total number of hours provided by volunteers to your Trust.  
  1. Regarding the use of charity services:  
  1. The average response time to an incident by charity services (please could you break this down by Category of Incident).  
  1. A list of the charities your Trust works with to provide ambulance and incident response services.  
  1. For each charity, please provide:  
  1. The number of incidents total the charity attended.  
  1. Any performance indicators you use to assess the charities you work with.  
Response

 1a - The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold the information in a way that allows us to report on average response times by attending vehicle. Community First Responders 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. 

1b – The total number of incidents attended by volunteers for the 23/24 financial year was 4485 

1c – The total amount of hours provided by volunteers to the Scottish Ambulance Service can only be calculated by the service time at incidents, for 2023/2024 financial year was 4758.32 hours. 

 

2a - The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold the information in a way that allows us to report on average response times by attending vehicle. the Red Cross (charity vehicle) 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. 

2b – The Scottish Ambulance Service no longer has any contracts with Private Ambulances.  In the financial year 2023/2024, there was a contract with The British Red Cross. 

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).

 

 

2c – The number of incidents attended by the British Red Cross for this time period was 38.  There was no performance indicators utilised at the time, it is for this reason I have applied section 17 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 as information not held. 

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