Review by Great Western Ambulance Service could lead to closure of ambulance stations

The changing nature of the emergency service and the likely implementation of the new 111 phone service means Great Western Ambulance Service needs to do a "thorough review of its ageing estate".

Interim chief executive at GWAS Martin Flaherty has announced that he plans to review all 30 of the service’s ageing ambulance stations, including Dursley, built in 1968 and Yate built in 1975.

Mr Flaherty said: "Over 70 per cent of our existing buildings were built before 1975 – when they came under NHS ownership – with many considerably older and therefore coming to the end of their worthwhile life. The maintenance backlog alone on our ambulance stations is in excess of £2million.

"As a publicly-funded service, we have to consider if it is a sensible use of taxpayers’ money to spend that sort of figure on ageing buildings.

"The focus of the estate review, therefore, is about ensuring as much of our income as possible goes into frontline services to benefit patients. This includes ensuring our staff have modern, fit-for-purpose bases from which to operate."

At the same time Mr Flaherty said GWAS was keen to roll out the 111 service, a new national phone number for non-emergency medical incidents, which is expected to generate up to 1.5 million calls in the Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and former Avon area.

This is around four times the current volume of 999 calls for GWAS, meaning the current call-handling capacity would have to be significantly increased.

"Bidding to run the 111 service in our region is a natural ambition for us, given that we already have considerable in-house clinical expertise and knowledge in handling emergency calls and the out-of-hours GP service in Gloucestershire," said Mr Flaherty.

An estate strategy document will be presented to the next trust board meeting (May 26) and, if approved, will see the establishment of three project teams to start work on the first phase of the review.