NHS ambulance response times
How quickly each of England's ambulance services responds to 999 calls, by urgency category — from life-threatening Category 1 calls to less-urgent Category 4 calls. Latest month: September 2026. These figures cover the ambulance service that answers and dispatches the call, not the hospital it takes a patient to — a different, regional dataset from the hospital A&E figures shown elsewhere on this site.
Category 1 & 2 — the most urgent calls
September 2026 · Category 1 (life-threatening, e.g. cardiac arrest) standard: mean 7:00, 90th-centile 15:00. Category 2 (emergency, e.g. stroke, chest pain) standard: mean 18:00, 90th-centile 40:00.
| Ambulance service | Cat 1 mean | Cat 1 90th centile | Cat 2 mean | Cat 2 90th centile | 999 contacts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| England | 7:59 | 14:19 | 31:18 | 1h 3m | 1,191,919 |
| EAST MIDLANDS AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 8:39 | 15:17 | 33:53 | 1h 7m | 106,250 |
| EAST OF ENGLAND AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 8:42 | 16:28 | 41:21 | 1h 28m | 130,917 |
| ISLE OF WIGHT NHS TRUST | 8:20 | 16:00 | 25:47 | 54:18 | 3,547 |
| LONDON AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 7:04 | 12:06 | 33:30 | 1h 10m | 196,042 |
| NORTH EAST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 6:19 | 11:00 | 21:09 | 42:26 | 53,398 |
| NORTH WEST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 7:03 | 11:58 | 24:20 | 47:43 | 142,446 |
| SOUTH CENTRAL AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 8:40 | 16:05 | 31:42 | 1h 0m | 86,326 |
| SOUTH EAST COAST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 7:50 | 15:32 | 32:33 | 1h 6m | 103,472 |
| SOUTH WESTERN AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 9:30 | 17:50 | 36:59 | 1h 15m | 123,577 |
| WEST MIDLANDS AMBULANCE SERVICE UNIVERSITY NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 8:16 | 14:35 | 24:30 | 49:52 | 140,105 |
| YORKSHIRE AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 8:08 | 14:08 | 27:27 | 56:31 | 105,839 |
Category 3 & 4 — urgent & less urgent calls
September 2026 · There is no official mean-time standard for Category 3 or 4 (mean columns are shown as context only). 90th-centile standards: Category 3 within 2 hours, Category 4 within 3 hours.
| Ambulance service | Cat 3 mean | Cat 3 90th centile | Cat 4 mean | Cat 4 90th centile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| England | 1h 57m | 4h 31m | 2h 25m | 5h 40m |
| EAST MIDLANDS AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 2h 25m | 5h 14m | 3h 33m | 8h 22m |
| EAST OF ENGLAND AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 2h 26m | 5h 46m | 2h 38m | 7h 32m |
| ISLE OF WIGHT NHS TRUST | 1h 15m | 2h 37m | 2h 13m | 5h 6m |
| LONDON AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 1h 40m | 4h 8m | 2h 37m | 5h 55m |
| NORTH EAST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 1h 0m | 2h 15m | 1h 13m | 2h 58m |
| NORTH WEST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 1h 31m | 3h 7m | 1h 36m | 3h 45m |
| SOUTH CENTRAL AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 2h 25m | 5h 12m | 2h 45m | 5h 32m |
| SOUTH EAST COAST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 2h 33m | 6h 6m | 3h 4m | 7h 13m |
| SOUTH WESTERN AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 2h 4m | 4h 46m | 2h 43m | 7h 2m |
| WEST MIDLANDS AMBULANCE SERVICE UNIVERSITY NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 2h 3m | 5h 4m | 2h 44m | 7h 16m |
| YORKSHIRE AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 1h 32m | 3h 36m | 2h 6m | 4h 30m |
Source: NHS England, Ambulance Quality Indicators (AmbSYS), reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0. About this data.
These are ambulance-SERVICE (regional) figures, covering England only — ambulance trusts cover large multi-hospital areas, so this data is shown as a standalone national picture rather than attached to any single hospital. It is measured completely separately from the hospital A&E 4-hour performance figures shown elsewhere on this site, and the two are never compared directly.