East Anglian Ambulance service using rental cars amidst vehicle shortage
They're waiting for a number of new vehicles to be delivered
The East Anglian Ambulance service says it's using rental cars to respond to calls due to a shortage of vehicles.
It comes after it was revealed earlier this week that the service will pay more than £11 million in ambulance running costs this year.
Anthony Brett is from the service and told us the hire cars came from "agencies across the region" whom they have an agreement with.
He explains they've made decision to "supplement our existing ambulance fleet to ensure that we can continue to deliver the good performance that we've seen over the last few months and also to ensure that our patients continue to receive a high quality and timely service."
These rental cars have been equipped to deal with a range of events and emergency calls, meaning they are suitable for the highest grade of emergency calls and the lower urgency calls.
Anthony did tell us the exception for these vehicles is that they wont send the cars to any road traffic accidents because they don't have blue lights "so it wouldn't be safe to park them on a live carriageway."
The East Anglian Ambulance Service is expecting 58 new vehicles to be delivered in March.
Has this affected their response times?
We asked Anthony if the introduction of these rental vehicles has improved waiting times.
He revealed since these have come into use, data from December 2022 to December 2023 shows their "performance has improved year on year."
How long will these rental cars be in use?
The East Anglian Ambulance Service recognises "it's not the most ideal situation to be in" but they have "clear improvement plans" to increase their core ambulance fleet.
This will focus on looking at their:
- Supply Chain
- How they source parts
- How they work with their external partners
- How they repair and the maintenance of their core fleet
- How they maximize the use of their internal workshops as well as repair their vehicles
Their fleet replacement program will start to kick in from March 2024 when they're expecting a delivery of 58 new vehicles, increasing the size of the fleet and the availability of vehicles with the overall intention then to "decommission the existing fleet which is starting to age now."
They have designed the vehicles in collaboration with their "clinicians and with the trade unions who advocate on behalf of (their) staff and our patients."
They have also been designed with the human in mind so that they are "ergonomically safe and easy to use."
Message to the general public
We asked Anthony if the service had a message to the general public about the wait times they had experienced.
He said they "sympathise with them for the length of time they do sometimes have to wait for services" and said he would like to "reassure (the public) that the East Anglian Ambulance Service's performance for patients remains very, very good."