Briefing – Scarborough Ambulance Station visit,
North Yorkshire Council
Visit date/time: Thursday 15 February, 2pm until approximately 3pm
Location: Scarborough Ambulance Station, Queen Margaret's Road, Scarborough, YO11 2YH. There is no reserved parking but public parking is available on Queen Margaret’s Road. Attendees should come to reception at the ambulance station where they will be met.
Attendees:
Yorkshire Ambulance Service, NHS Trust
· Peter Reading, Chief Executive
· Glen Adams, Director of Fleet and Estates
· Paul Mudd, Head of Operations, A&E Operations, North and East Yorkshire
· Steve West, Area Operations Manager
· Helen Edwards, Head of Communications and Community Engagement
North Yorkshire Council
· Councillor Liz Colling
· Councillor Rich Maw
· Councillor Clive Pearson
Background
The current station at Scarborough is leased and was built in 1998 as a standard industrial building with additional accommodation space upstairs.
Scarborough station currently has approximately 60 members staff based there for our A&E Operations service and 15 members of staff working in Patient Transport Service. In terms of fleet, there are approximately 9 double-crewed ambulances and 5 rapid response vehicles based from the station. The Patient Transport Service has 15 vehicles that are parked on the other side of the road in parking spaces separately leased.
The development of a new station for Scarborough is on a site next to Scarborough Hospital on Woodlands Drive and to replace the current two sites in Scarborough, which are no longer fit for purpose:
· The main site at Queen Margaret’s Road, which holds about four double-crewed ambulances in the garage, with accommodation for staff above.
· The separate Patient Transport Service (PTS) station at Lee Rumneys, which has limited parking.
The new Scarborough station aims to bring these services together and will be configured to support Ambulance Vehicle Preparation (AVP). The AVP service is operated by teams covering 24-hours a day/seven days a week to ensure that ambulance crews can access fully equipped, re-fuelled and re-stocked ambulances. This includes checking medical devices and medical consumables.
This service would also be provided from Scarborough through a “cluster” system for the stations at Filey, Bridlington, Kirkbymoorside and Whitby. This means staff working from those stations will also benefit from AVP.
The new Scarborough station has been designed for 112 members of staff, across all our services (A&E Operations, Patient Transport Service, Ambulance Vehicle Preparation, AVP, and Fleet), with parking for 44 Trust vehicles (including cluster parking of AVP vehicles from surrounding stations) and 64 car parking spaces.
The building’s construction will use the very latest methods and technologies and is being designed to meet Net Zero carbon guidelines.
Planning permission has been granted for the development and we finalised the purchase of the site in March 2023. Detailed design for the new station was undertaken and a cost for the construction work obtained.
However, due to the significant escalation in the cost of construction and building materials since the project began two years ago, increasing from £7m to £21m, the decision has been taken by the Trust’s Board in November 2023 to pause the project, enabling us to fully review the funding requirements.
Operational performance
In our A&E Operations service, we received 103,270 calls in January 2024, up from 84,801 calls in January 2023; responses were also up from 62,896 last January to 77,188 this January.
Our response to category 2 incidents was 34 minutes 30 seconds in January 2024 and the year-to-date response is 33 minutes and 2 seconds. This is an improvement on the same period in 2022/23 (which was 43 minutes 35 seconds); however, the target response time is 18 minutes, but currently set at 30 minutes by NHS England. The average time taken to hand over patients at hospital is currently 32 minutes and 50 seconds, with a target response of 15 minutes.
We work closely with York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to minimise long patient handover delays to ensure that those patients in the community receive and safe and responsive service. This remains a priority for both organisations and there is a senior executive meeting taking place on mid-February focused on this priority.
In addition to this, we work closely with local health and social care providers to ensure that patients receive the right care and treatment at the right time, first time. Not all patients that contact us require treatment in hospital and we continue to work closely with partners to ensure where care can be delivered closer to home, it is.
14 February 2024