Three city ambulance stations to merge into one

Three ambulance stations in Sheffield are set be closed and replaced with one combined facility in the coming years.

Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) plans to close its Middlewood, Longley and Batemoor bases over the next five years.

Its site in Wath, near Rotherham, will also relocate as the building no longer meets operational needs.

In a report to Sheffield councillors, YAS said that its estate was no longer "appropriate" for the workforce it had, despite some improvements being made.

A report to Sheffield City Council set out that the three stations were joined by several other response points where ambulances could wait between emergency calls.

The document stated: "Although improvements have been made to the current estate where possible, the Trust strategy includes ambitions for a new ambulance station in Sheffield within the next five years.

"This would replace the current stations with a combined station supported by local ambulance response points strategically located throughout the city to ensure the best response to the public."

The target for all English ambulance services is to respond to a category 2 call in less than 30 minutes.

Nationally response times deteriorated during 2024 and for December, the average response time for category 2 was 47 minutes - the longest for two years.

The average response time for YAS was 32 minutes.

The national target to hand over patients at hospital emergency departments is 15 minutes.

The report added: "Pressures across the health and social care system contribute to the hospital handover delays and the Trust remains concerned about the impact of the delays on patients and their care.

"YAS is focused on reducing the significant impact these delays can have on the availability of emergency ambulances to respond to patients in the community.

"There are challenges at hospitals across Yorkshire. At the Northern General Hospital (in Sheffield), the average handover time was 37 minutes and an average of 48 ambulance hours per day were lost due to delayed handovers, which is the equivalent of five ambulances on a 12-hour shift per day."

YAS added that it had recruited 67 additional paramedics, 49 new ambulance support workers and increased the size of the vehicle fleet by 17 ambulances.

Other changes to working practices include a senior nurse managing hospital handovers to free up ambulance staff for their next call; clinicians providing telephone advice on treatment and a specialist mental health response vehicle that covers Sheffield.

The Middlewood base also has a non-clinical team that refuels and restocks ambulances between shifts.

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