The South East Coast Ambulance Service Foundation Trust on track to exit NHS England’s Recovery Support Programme in May

Following an inspection in August 2022, which covered the Trust’s urgent and emergency care and resilience teams, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) handed down a rating of ‘requires improvement’.

During a West Sussex County Council scrutiny meeting, members heard about the improvements which have been made since then.

Ambulance response times for Category 2 calls, such as strokes, have ‘improved significantly’ and look set to achieve the 30-minute target set for the end of the month.

In December, the average response time for a Category 2 call was 32 minutes 20 seconds.

In January, it fell to 25 minutes 37 seconds – the second quickest in the country.

The figures were not so good for the other three categories, including Category 1, which covers life-threatening illnesses or injuries.

Against a national target of seven minutes, SECAmb saw an average eight minutes four seconds – better than the national average of eight minutes 26 seconds.

For Category 3 and Category 4 – urgent calls and less urgent calls – the average times were one hour 49 minutes 37 seconds and two hours 19 minutes 27 seconds respectively.

Both times were quicker than the national average.

When it came to how quickly emergency phone calls were answered, Ray Savage, SECAmb’s interim head of strategic partnerships and system engagement, said the Trust wasn’t quite where it ‘wanted to be’.

But he added that it was doing well when it came to deciding whether an ambulance was needed following a 111 call.

The time taken for staff to answer emergency phone calls has seen a huge improvement, but with more work to do.

In September 2023, it took an average of 47 seconds to answer, compared to a target of five seconds.

By January, that time had fallen to ten seconds.

Mr Savage said: “We’re not quite where we wanted to be and there is ongoing work to try to achieve that five-second target but we are hitting the ten-second target, which is a significant improvement to where we were 12 months previously.”

He credited the improvement to a number of factors including work to recruit and keep staff.

Looking at the CQC report as a whole and the subsequent work to improve, he said: “We’ve turned a number of the ‘must do’s that came out of the CQC recommendations into ‘business as usual’.

“Our focus is now [on] sustaining them.”

Matthew Webb, SECAmb’s associate director strategic partnerships & system engagement, explained that the Trust had three things to do before it could leave the NHS England support programme.

The first was to have a plan for financial sustainability – which he said had ‘challenges’ as the Trust was still waiting for guidance which should have been received in December.

The development of a five-year strategy was next – an area Mr Webb said was ‘progressing at pace’ and should be published early in April.

Mr Savage told the meeting that the model used by the Trust at the time of the inspection was ‘probably dated’ and a new strategy would be developed over the next 12-18 months.

He said: “If we get that right, that will see us through for the next five years and beyond.

“If we continue delivering our service as we’re currently delivering it, it’s only going to get worse for us, because the model we’re currently operating with isn’t going to take us forward.

“It’s going to mean that we’ll have worse response times [and] patients won’t have the right response.”

The third area needed to leave the support programme involved the need for executive stability – leadership – which was one of the concerns highlighted by the CQC.

A report to the committee said the Trust was on track to leave the programme in May, but Mr Webb warned there could be ‘some slippage’.

He said: “May 2024 was always an indicative date.

“There are some benefits to an organisation remaining in the Recovery Support Programme.

“It means we have an allocated improvement director, considerable support from the NHS England regional and national teams.

“There is additional funding support that’s offered. It also offers us access to a number of national programmes and support mechanisms that is very much supporting our people, around people and culture and well-being.”