Ambulance service response times

Background on ambulance service response time targets

As health is a devolved matter this information relates to ambulance services in England.

Ambulance response time targets are set out in the Handbook to the NHS Constitution for England.

There are four categories of severity for ambulance calls, as follows. Each has a different response time standard:

• Category 1: Calls relating to a life-threatening condition or injury, such as cardiac arrest or serious allergic reaction. The average response time should be under 7 minutes and 90% of ambulances should arrive within 15 minutes.
• Category 2: Emergency calls for conditions and injuries such as burns, epilepsy and strokes. The average response time should be under 18 minutes and 90% of ambulances should arrive within 40 minutes.
• Category 3: Urgent calls for conditions such as late stages of labour, non-severe burns, and diabetes. 90% of ambulances should arrive within 2 hours.
• Category 4: Less urgent calls for conditions such as diarrhoea and vomiting and urine infections. 90% of ambulances should arrive within 3 hours.

The current categories and standards have been in place nationally since 2018, after NHS England introduced a new set of ambulance performance targets.

Statistics on ambulance service response time targets

The table below shows recent performance against ambulance response time targets in England. Most targets were not met in January 2025.

Source: NHS England, Ambulance Quality Indicators, AmbSYS time series

For more statistics on ambulance response times, please see our briefing paper: NHS key statistics: England - House of Commons Library.

Government policy on ambulance service response times

In a statement on winter pressures on health and social care (15 January 2025), Secretary of State for Health, Wes Streeting, acknowledged that patients have been “let down by ambulances that do not arrive on time” and that there is “variation in performance across different parts of the country.”

Wes Streeting said that an urgent and emergency care improvement plan is currently in production and will be published before spring 2025. He also said that the government is “up for looking at co-location of different public services, to deliver both better integration and co-operation between different services”, including blue-light services.

The government's 2025 mandate to NHS England (30 January 2025), includes an objective to ‘reform to improve urgent and emergency care’. The mandate describes ambulance response times and A&E waiting times as “unacceptable”.

NHS England’s 2025/26 priorities and operational planning guidance (30 January 2025), includes a ‘national priority’ to improve A&E waiting times and ambulance response times in 2025/26, compared with 2024/25. A minimum of 78% of patients should be seen within 4 hours in March 2026 and category 2 ambulance response times should average no more than 30 minutes across 2025/26.

The guidance also includes actions to reduce avoidable ambulance dispatches and conveyances and reduce handover delays. It says NHS England will publish guidance to support Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) with commissioning ambulance services in 2025/26 and publish a new ambulance commissioning specification in 2025/26, to support ICBs with commissioning in 2026/27.

The government has said it will publish a 10-Year Health Plan in Spring 2025.

In January 2023, under the previous government, NHS England published a Delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services.

Parliamentary material Parliamentary Questions

Ambulance Services and Hospital Beds: Standards
14 January 2025 | HL3677

Asked by: Lord Kamall

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of whether there are enough hospital beds and ambulances for this winter; and what steps are they taking to increase them.

Answering member: Baroness Merron | Department: Department of Health and Social Care

The national approach on priorities for winter planning were issued by NHS England on 16 September 2024, setting out the key steps to be taken to support the delivery of high-quality care for patients this winter. Provisions for resourcing of hospital beds and ambulances for this winter are an operational matter for the National Health Service.

The NHS is managing extra demand over the winter period, by strengthening same day emergency care, offering more falls services for older people, and with upgraded 24-hour live data centres.

Early Day Motions

Emergency care
20 November 2024 | EDM 437 (session 2024-25)

That this House notes with dismay that emergency departments across England are in a state of crisis after years of neglect and failure by the last Conservative government; commends the hard work of all emergency service workers that despite extremely tough working conditions save thousands of lives every day; notes with concern the appalling deterioration of emergency care and surging waiting times in all parts of the health service as well as reports of patients dying in A&E waiting rooms; further notes that many patients are not monitored by a clinician while waiting to be seen at A&E; regrets the recent decision to hike national insurance contributions for GPs and care providers, placing further strain on overwhelmed emergency departments; calls on the government to ensure that a fully qualified clinician is present in every A&E waiting room to monitor the condition of waiting patients; and further calls on the government to cut ambulance response times, increase the number of beds in A&E departments, end delayed discharge from hospital, and commit to cross-party talks on social care.

Further reading

Nuffield Trust response to new NHS performance data, Nuffield Trust (13 February 2025)

Urgent and emergency care pressures persist, The Health Foundation (13 February 2025)

Our urgent and emergency care improvement proposals, The Patients Association, Royal College of Emergency Medicine, Royal College of General Practitioners, College of Paramedics, National Association of Primary Care, Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (22 January 2025)

Ambulances Are Bringing Care Closer To Home, The King’s Fund (26 September 2024)

Heart attack patients wait 20 per cent longer for ambulances in winter, The Times (7 February 2025)

Ambulance crews stuck at A&E miss thousands of 999 calls a day in England, The Guardian (12 January 2025)

Average ambulance response times for heart attacks and strokes have risen, new data shows, British Heart Foundation (9 January 2025)

Ambulance, GP and emergency care waits among biggest NHS concerns – poll, The Independent (3 January 2025)

Ambulance Service investigates record number of high-risk incidents, The Times (31 December 2024)

Delays waste 130,000 hours of ambulance time in a fortnight, The Times (16 December 2024)

Heart attack patients advised to get themselves to A&E The Times (8 December 2024)