North West Ambulance Service
The North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust is the ambulance service for North West England. It is one of ten ambulance trusts providing England with Emergency medical services, and is part of the National Health Service, receiving direct government funding for its role.
NWAS was formed on 1 July 2006, following the merger of four previous services as part of Health Minister Lord Warner's plans to combine ambulance services.
Based in Bolton, the trust provides services to over 7million people in Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Merseyside, Lancashire, Cumbria, and the North Western fringes of the High Peak district of Derbyshire in an area of.
NWAS provides emergency ambulance response via the 999 system, as well as operating the NHS 111 advice service for North West England.
They also operate non-emergency patient transport services for part of the region, and in 2013/2014 carried out 1.2million such journeys. Since 2016, the PTS in Cheshire, Warrington and Wirral has instead been carried out by West Midlands Ambulance Service.
Fleet
NWAS utilise a mixed fleet of emergency and patient transport ambulances. As a member of the Northern Ambulance Alliance, the trust shares a common fleet of Fiat Ducato dual crewed ambulances and Kia EV6, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and BMW X1 (F48) rapid response cars. In Greater Manchester, some paramedics respond on specially converted bicycles; cycle responders were also trialled in Liverpool during the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest.In 2017, NWAS began using 26 BMW i3 electric cars for use as rapid response vehicles. The rollout of electric vehicles in the NWAS fleet expanded with the delivery of eight Mercedes-Benz eVito mental health ambulances in 2022 and 2023.
Locations and structure
The trust currently operates from 104 ambulance stations across the North West. The most northerly station is at Carlisle, and the furthest south is at Crewe. It also maintains three Emergency Operations Centres for the handling of 999 calls and dispatch of emergency ambulances.- Parkway
- Estuary Point – formerly Elm House
- Broughton
Over recent years, the trust has combined many of their older ambulance stations into purpose-built facilities shared with other emergency services, including Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue, Lancashire Fire and Rescue and Greater Manchester Police.
Performance
NWAS was the first ambulance trust to be inspected by the Care Quality Commission, in August 2014. The CQC found the trust provided safe and effective services which were well-led and with a clear focus on quality but it was criticised for taking too many callers to hospital and for sending ambulances when other responses would have been more appropriate. The trust was subsequently inspected in 2018 and was found to have improved with a rating of "Good"CQC performance rating
In its last inspection of the service in February 2020, the Care Quality Commission gave the following ratings on a scale of outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate :| Area | Rating 2017 | Rating 2018 | Rating 2020 |
| Are services Safe? | Requires improvement | Good | Good |
| Are services Effective? | Good | Good | Good |
| Are services Caring | Good | Good | Good |
| Are services Responsive | Good | Good | Good |
| Are services Well-led | Requires improvement | Good | Good |
| Overall rating | Requires improvement | Good | Good |