FOI 26-223 ACC Leavers Figures
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 26-223 ACC Leavers Figures
- Request Date
- 08 May 2026
- Response Date
- 09 Jun 2026
- Information Requested
I am requesting aggregated workforce information relating to ambulance service control room staff.
For the purposes of this request, control room staff should be interpreted as staff whose substantive role is based within an Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) or equivalent, including call handling, dispatch, and control room leadership functions. Unless otherwise stated, please provide data for the most recent three full financial years available.
- Control room staff groups and bands
Please confirm whether your organisation records the following control room staff groups as distinct roles for workforce reporting purposes:
- Call handlers
- Senior call handlers
- Dispatchers
- Senior dispatchers
- Clinical control room roles (e.g. clinicians desk, clinical support)
- Control room supervisors, managers or team leaders
For each group where data is held, please provide headcount broken down by:
- Agenda for Change band (Bands 3 to 7 only)
- Clinical or non clinical classification
If roles are not recorded in this way, please describe how control room roles are grouped.
- Control room leavers
For the same period, please provide the number of leavers from control room roles, broken down by:
- Staff group (using the role groups above, or nearest equivalent)
- Clinical vs non clinical
- Agenda for Change band (Bands 3 to 7)
- Financial year
- Turnover reporting
Please advise whether your organisation calculates turnover rates specifically for control room staff.
If yes:
- Please provide annual turnover rates for control room staff (Bands 3 to 7)
If no:
- Please confirm that this is not routinely calculated
- Reasons for leaving
Please provide the aggregated number of control room leavers by reason for leaving, using your locally recorded ESR or workforce categories. Where possible, please group responses under the following high level headings:
- Resignation
- Health related leaving
- Dismissal or capability
- Failed probation or training
- Retirement • Redundancy
- Other No personal or identifiable information is requested.
- Reporting and definitions
Please confirm:
- Whether control room leavers are reported separately from wider Trust leavers
- Whether internal moves out of the control room are recorded as leavers, transfers, or excluded
- Which system(s) are used to report control room leavers (e.g. ESR, local HR systems, workforce dashboards)
- Data limitations
Please outline any known limitations that should be applied when interpreting your control room leaver data, for example:
- Training stage attrition not recorded
- ESR only reporting
- Changes in role definitions over time
- Response
Question 1.
The Scottish Ambulance Service records control room workforce rolls under the following groups:
- Call Handler – Non-Clinical
- Dispatcher - Non-Clinical
- Supervisor – Non-Clinical
- Clinical Advisor - Clinical
- Shift Manager – Non-Clinical
Further subgroups (e.g. ‘senior’ roles) are not separately recorded for workforce purposes.
All roles are assigned to Agenda for Change bands as follows:
- Band 3 – Call Handler
- Band 4 – Dispatcher
- Band 5 – Supervisor
- Band 6 – Clinical Advisor
- Band 7 – Shift Manager
Please see the attached sheet, the first tab details the dataset as held for headcount by role and band broken down by year.
Question 2.
Please see the attached sheet, tab 2 detailing the Control Room leavers by role and groups as provided in our answer to question 1 and band for each year requested.
For the given data, you will see that some of the figures are shown as, five or less than five, please note that this figure has been suppressed because the statistical value is less than five and greater than zero. The Scottish Ambulance service has a duty, under the Data Protection Act to avoid directly or indirectly revealing any personal details. It is therefore widely understood that provision of statistics on small numbers, five or less are statistically suppressed upon disclosure.
Question 3.
No, the Scottish Ambulance Service does not routinely calculate or report turnover rates specifically for control room staff.
Question 4.
Please see the attached sheet, tab named Q4.
Question 5.
- Control room leavers are not routinely reported separately from wider Scottish Ambulance Service leavers.
- Internal moves out of the control room are not captured within the scope of this request, as they are not classified as leavers.
- For reporting purposes, “leavers” are defined as individuals who have left employment with the Scottish Ambulance Service entirely.
- This information has been derived from the Scottish Ambulance Service HR system (eESS)
Question 6.
The Scottish Ambulance Service can provide the following information regarding known limitations in interpreting control room leaver data:
- Control room leavers are not routinely reported separately from wider Scottish Ambulance Service leavers within the national HR system (eESS), and therefore analysis is limited to overall workforce leaver data rather than control room‑specific datasets.
- Internal movements (including transfers or role changes out of control room functions) are not classified as leavers within eESS and are not captured in this dataset.
- Data is derived from a single HR system (eESS) and therefore reflects the definitions and fields available within that system only.
- Changes in role titles, job families, or organisational structures over time may affect the consistency of categorisation when attempting to identify control room staff retrospectively.
- The dataset does not routinely distinguish between reasons for leaving at different employment stages (for example, training stage attrition versus post‑qualification leavers), unless recorded in standard termination fields.
- Response Documents
