FOI 26-427 ILT incidents in Aberdeenshire
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 26-427 ILT incidents in Aberdeenshire
- Request Date
- 15 Sep 2026
- Response Date
- 13 Oct 2026
- Information Requested
Under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, please provide, for each month from January to August 2026:
- The number of immediately life-threatening incidents within the NHS Grampian area where no ambulance resource based within the NHS Grampian area was immediately available when the call was received.
- If already centrally recorded, the number of incidents in Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire attended by an ambulance resource based in Moray.
- Response
- The number of immediately life-threatening incidents within the NHS Grampian area where no ambulance resource based within the NHS Grampian area was immediately available when the call was received.
The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold recorded information identifying the number of immediately life-threatening incidents within the NHS Grampian area where no ambulance resource based within that area was immediately available when the call was received.
Although the Service holds records relating to incidents and resource deployments, its operational systems do not centrally record or report whether, at the precise time each call was received, no resource with a home dispatch point within NHS Grampian was immediately available.
This would require a retrospective, incident-by-incident examination of historical resource deployment and activity records. It would then be necessary to assess the location and operational status of potentially relevant resources at the time of each call and draw a conclusion about whether a Grampian-based resource was immediately available. This would require analysis and judgement to derive an answer that is not already held as recorded information.
The Scottish Information Commissioner’s guidance explains that FOISA applies to information recorded in any form and held by the authority at the time a request is received. Public authorities are required to undertake reasonable and proportionate searches for recorded information, but they are not required to create new information in order to answer a request.
Producing the requested figure would therefore involve the creation of new information through retrospective analysis, rather than the retrieval of information already held by the Service. Accordingly, in terms of section 17(1) of FOISA, the Scottish Ambulance Service gives notice that it does not hold the information requested.
- If already centrally recorded, the number of incidents in Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire attended by an ambulance resource based in Moray.
The Scottish Ambulance Service does not categorise incidents by local authority area within its operational reporting systems. To provide information for Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire, National Records of Scotland council area classifications have therefore been used to identify incidents occurring within those areas.
The Scottish Ambulance Service also does not have a category of resource recorded as a “Moray resource”. For the purpose of responding to this request, resources with the following home dispatch points have been used as a proxy:
- Elgin
- Forres
- Dufftown
- Buckie
- Keith
The figures provided therefore show incidents in Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire between 1 January and 31 August 2026 where the attending resource had one of the above home dispatch points. They are presented by month and call colour.
The Scottish Ambulance Service operates a dynamic deployment model. Resources are deployed according to operational demand, workforce and patient need, and the most appropriate available resource may be dispatched regardless of its home dispatch point. A resource’s recorded home dispatch point does not necessarily indicate where it was physically located immediately before being assigned to an incident. The figures should not therefore be interpreted as showing that a resource travelled directly from its home base in the Moray area, or that a locally based resource was unavailable.
For the given data, you will see that some of the figures are shown as <5, please note that this figure has been suppressed because the statistical value is more than zero but less than five. 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.
- Response Documents
