East: Ambulance Service Announces £17m Investment

10 May 2013, 17:16 | Updated: 10 May 2013, 17:21

The East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust (EEAST) is investing approximately £14m in new emergency ambulances and £2.3m in its response car fleet.

The region’s ambulance service has confirmed it is spending nearly £17m on fleet following a recent announcement that new ambulances and rapid response cars will be taking to the streets over the next year. 

The new fleet of ambulances and rapid response cars (RRVS) are to be rolled out across the region as part of a new vehicle replacement programme. EEAST’s Board agreed to a rolling replacement programme of 145 A&E ambulances and 110 rapid response cars between now and the end of June in 2014.

Associate Director of Operations Support, Paul Henry said: “The Board approved the programme to replace older vehicles and, in addition, to support our work on ambulance capacity and it was agreed that an additional 25 new ambulances over and above the standard replacement programme would be brought into service.”

Paul added: “Our fleet team is currently completing the procurement process that will anticipate that 50 of the new ambulances will be in service before Christmas and a further 47 coming into service during March 2014. The remaining 48 ambulances are expected to come into service between May and June 2014.”

The fleet team will work closely with operational staff representatives to refresh and review the ambulance’s design and specification to ensure it fully meets patient and staff requirements.