Report for Swanage Town Council Meeting 13th March 2023

Freedom of information act response from SWAST for the last half of last year, July-December 2022. The data relates to

  1. The Swanage based Ambulance Car staffing, number of call outs, and location of call outs each month
  2. The average emergency response times for Swanage & Wareham, regardless of the vehicle attending, by category, and by month
  3. Item three

There is some good news

  1. The Car staffing: Although the staffing is still not as good as we would like, due to staff being taken off the Car to make up gaps in the double crewed Ambulance rota, since September 22 the Car has been staffed about 67% of the time. This is compared to the Car being staffed only 40% of the time while the future of the Car remained uncertain.
  2. 70% of Car call outs are in Purbeck (this was 60% over the first 6 months of last year). 68% of the Purbeck call outs are in Swanage

However

  1. The Car despite being better staffed attended less call outs July-December 22 (421 call outs) compared to January – June 22 (466 call outs). We could usefully ask why. The number of call outs remains about 1/3 of the call outs attended by the Car over 6 months in 2019.
  2. The overall emergency response times were better in the second half of last year than in the first half, but remain significantly below targets:
    • a. Category 1, imminent danger of death – the target response time to maximise the chance to save life is 7 minutes. For the period July – December 22, just over 11 minutes was the best average category 1 response time achieved in any month for Swanage (this was achieved in September and November) and for Wareham (achieved November).
      For Swanage, the other 4 months had category 1 response times between 14 -17 minutes. For Wareham the other 5 months had category 1 response times between 12-16 minutes. However these times are better than the response times for January – June 22, when the best average Category 1 response time achieved for Swanage was just under 12 minutes in June, however for 2 of the other 5 months the average Category 1 response times were over 20 minutes (for example they were 26 minutes in May, when the Car was only staffed 33% of the time)
    • b. Category 2, risk of death or serious disability – the target response time here is 20 minutes: Swanage times for the period July – December 22 were under an hour for Swanage and Wareham every month except December. Although well beyond the target times, this was an improvement on the previous 6 months (January – June 22) when the category 2 average response times were over an hour 4 months out of 6.

      NB SWAST did not give response times for Wareham January – June 22, only for Swanage, and for Purbeck as a whole.

Share