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: July 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
July 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 | 8:00 | 14:23 | 29:49 | 1h 0m | 1,233,510 |
| EAST MIDLANDS AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 8:50 | 15:37 | 33:52 | 1h 8m | 108,436 |
| EAST OF ENGLAND AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 8:49 | 16:35 | 34:51 | 1h 13m | 132,623 |
| ISLE OF WIGHT NHS TRUST | 8:18 | 16:07 | 28:16 | 55:42 | 3,783 |
| LONDON AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 7:11 | 12:21 | 34:04 | 1h 11m | 205,026 |
| NORTH EAST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 6:16 | 10:43 | 20:28 | 41:19 | 54,702 |
| NORTH WEST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 7:02 | 12:03 | 23:30 | 45:43 | 144,223 |
| SOUTH CENTRAL AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 8:38 | 16:03 | 31:15 | 59:11 | 89,688 |
| SOUTH EAST COAST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 7:52 | 15:35 | 30:40 | 1h 2m | 111,260 |
| SOUTH WESTERN AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 9:36 | 18:00 | 39:23 | 1h 21m | 133,279 |
| WEST MIDLANDS AMBULANCE SERVICE UNIVERSITY NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 8:01 | 14:12 | 19:38 | 38:40 | 141,039 |
| YORKSHIRE AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 7:57 | 13:48 | 24:42 | 50:28 | 109,451 |
Category 3 & 4 — urgent & less urgent calls
July 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 51m | 4h 19m | 2h 24m | 5h 36m |
| EAST MIDLANDS AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 2h 20m | 5h 12m | 3h 21m | 8h 38m |
| EAST OF ENGLAND AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 1h 59m | 4h 40m | 2h 17m | 5h 10m |
| ISLE OF WIGHT NHS TRUST | 1h 33m | 3h 41m | 1h 53m | 5h 3m |
| LONDON AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 1h 46m | 4h 30m | 2h 52m | 6h 27m |
| NORTH EAST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 57:30 | 2h 12m | 1h 11m | 3h 3m |
| NORTH WEST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 1h 26m | 2h 58m | 1h 43m | 3h 51m |
| SOUTH CENTRAL AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 2h 21m | 5h 12m | 2h 43m | 5h 52m |
| SOUTH EAST COAST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 2h 29m | 5h 50m | 3h 3m | 6h 57m |
| SOUTH WESTERN AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 2h 17m | 5h 24m | 2h 40m | 6h 53m |
| WEST MIDLANDS AMBULANCE SERVICE UNIVERSITY NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 1h 39m | 4h 11m | 2h 2m | 5h 9m |
| YORKSHIRE AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 1h 22m | 3h 11m | 2h 1m | 4h 13m |
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.