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: August 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
August 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 | 7:56 | 14:11 | 28:52 | 58:37 | 1,195,154 |
| EAST MIDLANDS AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 8:50 | 15:41 | 31:47 | 1h 2m | 106,335 |
| EAST OF ENGLAND AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 8:46 | 16:18 | 34:17 | 1h 11m | 130,488 |
| ISLE OF WIGHT NHS TRUST | 8:56 | 17:30 | 28:45 | 1h 1m | 3,665 |
| LONDON AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 7:07 | 12:05 | 32:23 | 1h 8m | 196,053 |
| NORTH EAST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 6:14 | 10:42 | 19:48 | 39:59 | 53,570 |
| NORTH WEST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 6:58 | 11:42 | 23:03 | 44:58 | 140,727 |
| SOUTH CENTRAL AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 8:43 | 16:12 | 28:44 | 55:15 | 87,054 |
| SOUTH EAST COAST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 7:25 | 14:42 | 29:22 | 58:38 | 106,197 |
| SOUTH WESTERN AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 9:35 | 17:42 | 37:41 | 1h 17m | 124,755 |
| WEST MIDLANDS AMBULANCE SERVICE UNIVERSITY NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 8:00 | 14:22 | 20:56 | 41:52 | 139,344 |
| YORKSHIRE AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 7:54 | 13:40 | 24:27 | 49:37 | 106,966 |
Category 3 & 4 — urgent & less urgent calls
August 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 47m | 4h 9m | 2h 14m | 5h 2m |
| EAST MIDLANDS AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 2h 15m | 5h 4m | 3h 6m | 7h 19m |
| EAST OF ENGLAND AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 1h 55m | 4h 32m | 1h 56m | 4h 48m |
| ISLE OF WIGHT NHS TRUST | 1h 26m | 3h 22m | 2h 11m | 5h 23m |
| LONDON AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 1h 41m | 4h 13m | 2h 47m | 6h 44m |
| NORTH EAST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 57:14 | 2h 13m | 1h 13m | 2h 56m |
| NORTH WEST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 1h 25m | 2h 58m | 1h 26m | 3h 5m |
| SOUTH CENTRAL AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 2h 3m | 4h 24m | 2h 23m | 4h 43m |
| SOUTH EAST COAST AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 2h 21m | 5h 35m | 2h 57m | 6h 11m |
| SOUTH WESTERN AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 2h 4m | 4h 49m | 2h 33m | 6h 16m |
| WEST MIDLANDS AMBULANCE SERVICE UNIVERSITY NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | 1h 50m | 4h 36m | 2h 14m | 5h 25m |
| YORKSHIRE AMBULANCE SERVICE NHS TRUST | 1h 19m | 3h 1m | 1h 47m | 3h 37m |
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.