Number of 999 calls flagged as no unit available or delayed response

The request was successful.

Dear FOI Team,

I write, under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, to request the number of 999 calls that were flagged as no unit/resource available, or took longer than 15 minutes to be attended, between January 2018 and June 2022.

As part of this request, I would like the information to be broken down into the following:

i) The number of 999 calls received between January 2018 and June 2022, broken down into months, years and a grand total;

ii) Out of these 999 calls, how many were flagged as no unit/resource available, and how many were not attended within 15 minutes;

iii) Your incident response time targets, and how many times these targets were missed during the above time frame;

iii) The average time for a 999 call to be attended;

iv) The longest period of time for a 999 call to be attended.

Please present the information in Excel format.

Yours faithfully,

Oliver Murphy

FOI, East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust

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1. https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/your...

FOI, East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust

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Dear Oliver

 

Further to your email dated 28th July 2022, please find the Trust's
response below.  Your request has been allocated the following reference:
01/FOI/22/000173, please could you quote this reference in any future
correspondence with the Trust.

 

 

I write, under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, to request the
number of 999 calls that were flagged as no unit/resource available, or
took longer than 15 minutes to be attended, between January 2018 and June
2022.

 

As part of this request, I would like the information to be broken down
into the following:

 

i) The number of 999 calls received between January 2018 and June 2022,
broken down into months, years and a grand total;

 

ii) Out of these 999 calls, how many were flagged as no unit/resource
available, and how many were not attended within 15 minutes;

 

iii) Your incident response time targets, and how many times these targets
were missed during the above time frame;

 

iii) The average time for a 999 call to be attended;

 

iv) The longest period of time for a 999 call to be attended.

 

Please find attached the report containing the following data from January
2018 to June 2022:

 

• Total number of contacts
• Total numbers of incidents with response time over 15 minutes
• Mean and 90^th percentile response times, highlighted where response
time targets were missed
• Longest responses (C1—C4) by year

 

Regarding the question “how many were flagged as no unit/resource
available”:

 

Due to continued pressures on the Trust, all incidents are unallocated
when they are received on the Pending Stack that Dispatch Teams use for
allocating resources. A Dispatch area can be holding multiple incidents of
multiple priorities at any one time. These are allocated by Dispatchers in
the order of the geographically nearest, longest waiting call, of the
highest priority, to a resource, when it becomes available. If a resource
is allocated to a lower priority call (e.g. a C3) and a higher priority
call is received (e.g. a C1) before they arrive at the incident, the
resource will be reallocated to the higher priority call. This process of
diverting resources can be occurring frequently to multiple incidents at
once, as resources are frequently booking available in addition to new
Incidents being received.

 

Due to the speed/frequency at which these decisions are occur, dispatchers
do not mark an incident as “no unit/resource available” as every incident
is deemed as unallocated until the point at which it is then allocated.

 

For this reason, we are unable to indicate how many incidents were flagged
as no unit/resource available as it is not something our call centres
record at an incident level.

 

 

I am obliged to advise you that if you are dissatisfied with the Trust’s
response to your request you have a right to complain to the Trust and
should set out your concerns to the Freedom of Information Officer, EEAST,
Hospital Approach, Broomfield, Chelmsford, Essex, CM1 7WS or by email to
[1][East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust request email]. If you remain dissatisfied following this, you have
a right under Section 50 of the FOIA to seek a determination from the
Information Commissioner on whether the Act has been properly applied by
the Trust. For more information, please see [2]www.ico.gov.uk/

 

Under the Accessible Information Standard the Trust is required to ask our
FoI applicants equality and diversity questions. You are under no
obligation; however we would be grateful if you could complete the form
attached and email this back to us.

 

Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require any further
information.

 

Kind regards

 

 

FoI Officer

East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust

 

Email: [East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust request email]

 

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