Ambulance service ‘facing crisis’

The ambulance service is facing a crisis this winter, general union GMB has warned.

In letters to health secretary Sajid Javid and Health Select Committee chair Jeremy Hunt, the union spoke of “serious concerns regarding the untenable workplace pressures that our members are facing”.

It said that GMB members in the ambulance service were concerned about:

• increasing demands on the service and hospitals as Covid cases grow alongside the 5.6 million backlog of routine hospital treatments;

• the government’s approach to Covid communications since the summer and the lack of serious and clear public health communications, including the need to spell out to the public what they should and should not be calling an ambulance for; and

• ongoing failures of the entire health and social care system, including pathways for social care cases, the failure of NHS 111 to triage calls within the 60-minute deadline and the lack of GP appointments – all resulting in unnecessary emergency call outs.

GMB announced it will ballot NHS and ambulance workers for strike action this week over the “miserable pay cut” they have been offered.

https://www.gmb.org.uk/news/ambulance-service-faces-utterly-unprecedented-crisis