
Ian Payne 4am - 7am
8 May 2025, 07:58
Frontline emergency workers have warned LBC that patients are facing even longer waits for hospital care as a result of NHS trusts cutting the use of private ambulances services in a bid to save money.
LBC has learned the majority of England’s ambulance trusts have recently stopped using private ambulance services or cut down their contract hours.
At busy times like Christmas and bank holidays, their services have often been deployed to ease pressures, facilitating non-emergency tasks such as the transfer of in-patients between hospitals.
In a call to Nick Ferrari at Breakfast, emergency worker Brian lamented that he and his colleagues had been simply “discarded”, resulting in the loss of crucial skills in the NHS and increased pressure on paramedics carrying out emergency work.
“What people don’t realise is that a paramedic has a burn time - from qualifying to leaving the service - of eighteen months… they’re simply burnt out from the pressure of it,” Brian told LBC, contending that the loss of the decision to cut Emergency Medical Technicians, who attend frontline calls, will exacerbate these pressures.
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Many trusts told LBC they were scaling on private ambulance services in order to meet budget targets set by NHS England.
One private provider said the problem is being made worse by the hike they are facing in national insurance payments.
Brian’s warnings about the pressure facing frontline workers was backed up by Garrett Emmerson, former head of the London Ambulance Service, who warned trusts are facing unprecedented demand.
“We have seen year on year growth in the number of 999 calls and call outs ambulance crews are making," Mr Emmerson told LBC. "That has put pressure on individual trusts who have to make sure they have enough ambulances on the roads to respond to anything that's thrown at them."
Delays in the delivery of emergency care, which can be caused by a lack of capacity, can have devastating consequences.
Earlier this year, LBC revealed that an average of 1,000 patients per week have suffered potentially life-threatening harm after being stuck in an ambulance outside A&E departments since Labour’s election victory
Robert Christensen's partner, Susan, had a stroke just before Christmas at their home in Wiltshire.
It took almost two hours for an ambulance to arrive to take her to hospital.
"Susan has lost the use of her left side and her left arm and leg," Robert recalled in an emotional conversation with LBC.
"We have just felt so helpless,” he continued: “All the apologies in the world and admissions of failing won't change what happened to Susan and aren’t going to make her life any better."
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South Western Ambulance Trust have apologised and admitted the delay was unacceptable, pointing to extreme winter pressures.
Indeed, the trust is one of those to tell LBC they are “proactively reducing” their use of private ambulance providers, in order to meet targets of cutting agency spending by 30 percent.
In response to our investigation, a Department of Health and Social spokesperson told LBC: "it is for NHS ambulance trusts to determine whether additional capacity from the independent sector is needed to meet the demand they face.
“We know that because of the broken NHS this government inherited, patients are waiting far too long for ambulances. Through our Plan for Change we are fundamentally reforming the health service, improving A&E waiting times and ambulance response times and shifting services from the hospital to the community to ensure patients can access the right treatment closer to home.”