West Midlands ambulance stations could be axed under review

Closing “rarely-used” bases would not impact on ambulance coverage or response times in their host towns, the West Midlands service says.

Oswestry’s community ambulance station (CAS) which is based at the Cambrian Medical Centre, is one of 10 operated by the West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) that is currently is under review.

Crews based at the site, off Gobowen Road, attended approximately 21,000 incidents in the first six months of 2021, but only a small percentage of those involved treating or transporting patients from the town itself, said a service spokesman.

He added that the aim was to make “best use of all our resources”, and said centralising staff and vehicles at the service’s hubs  – which are based at bigger sites – would cut down on travel time to CASs for meal breaks and shift changes, or to the hub mid-shift for re-stocking.

The nearest hub for Oswestry is Shrewsbury.

The West Midlands Ambulance Service serves a population of 5.6 million across Birmingham, the Black Country, Coventry, Herefordshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, Warwickshire and Worcestershire.

It operates 15 ambulance hubs, including two at Donnington and Shrewsbury.

The WMAS spokesperson said the service previously had more than 90 community stations with more than 100 rapid-response cars across the region, but, since the 2017 publication of NHS England’s Performance Response Programme, it has instead centralised staff and equipment at the hubs.

Of the 10 remaining CASs, four are in Shropshire: Bridgnorth, Craven Arms, Market Drayton and Oswestry, while Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire each have two more.

The spokesman said staff would be consulted ahead of any changes and, if CASs close, staff currently based at them would be given the choice of which hub to move to, and they would in future start their shifts from there.

He said: “We are reviewing the use of each of our community ambulance stations to make sure we’re making the best use of all our resources.

“Ambulance crews are busy responding to one emergency after another and rarely, if ever, go back to the site except for shift changes and meal breaks.”

He said that, when an incident is reported, the nearest available ambulance is always sent, regardless of where it is based.

“The ambulances based at the CAS sites are rarely there – only around five per cent of the cases in the area are actually responded to by the ambulance based at the CAS site,” he said.

“The other 95 per cent are responded to by ambulances that start and finish their shifts elsewhere.”