Over 300 high-priority emergency calls responded to by ambulances only after two hours in first six months of 2022

Ambulances took more than two hours to arrive at the scene of a high priority emergency call more than 300 times in the first six months of last year.

Figures from the National Ambulance Service (NAS) show how 48 calls – classified as DELTA for dealing with life-threatening events other than cardiac or respiratory arrest – were not responded to until three hours after the original call was made.

In a further 28 cases, there were delays of over four hours in response time while 20 cases had a response time exceeding five hours, according to data released under FOI.

The NAS said only one ECHO call – a serious life-threatening cardiac or respiratory arrest – had taken in excess of one hour for a response time.

Altogether, there were 2,612 DELTA calls that took at least one hour to respond to from the time an emergency call was placed.

A target response time of nineteen minutes is in place for all callouts considered life-threatening, including both ECHO and DELTA calls.

We’ve also made the data available in Excel with some pivot tables included below.

If you’re working in local media, you should be able to click into your own county so feel free to use … with perhaps a small credit for Right to Know!