FOI 26-461 Information of Operation Ambulance Service
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 26-461 Information of Operation Ambulance Service
- Request Date
- 02 Oct 2026
- Response Date
- 28 Oct 2026
- Information Requested
Please can you provide the following recorded information for your emergency ambulance service. A spreadsheet or existing management report would be welcome. If a requested breakdown is not held, please provide the closest held breakdown and explain its definition; there is no need to create new information.
At 31 March 2026, provide the number of operational vehicles by the categories your service uses, identifying at least double-crewed emergency ambulances, rapid response vehicles, specialist response vehicles, and patient transport vehicles where these are separately recorded. Please state whether counts refer to owned/leased fleet, vehicles available for deployment, or vehicles actually crewed.
At 31 March 2026, provide the employed workforce headcount and full-time equivalent by operational role and Agenda for Change band, including emergency ambulance clinicians/support staff, call handling/dispatch, and specialist response staff where separately recorded. Please identify bank and agency staff separately if included. Existing role or pay-band reports are sufficient.
At 31 March 2026, provide the number of ambulance stations, deployment hubs, control rooms and other permanent operational bases, using your own definitions. Please state if any temporary standby points are included.
For 2025/26, provide the number of specialist response teams and vehicles by type (for example HART, SORT, critical/urgent care or mental health response), and annual deployments by type if already held. Please distinguish trust/service-owned resources from partnership or charity resources.
If already held as a separate figure, provide your 2025/26 income or commissioned funding attributable to emergency ambulance services, excluding NHS 111 or equivalent telephone advice services and
non-emergency patient transport. Please identify the accounting definition. If this is not separately held, please say so and point me to the relevant published accounts.
- Response
At 31 March 2026, provide the number of operational vehicles by the categories your service uses, identifying at least double-crewed emergency ambulances, rapid response vehicles, specialist response vehicles, and patient transport vehicles where these are separately recorded. Please state whether counts refer to owned/leased fleet, vehicles available for deployment, or vehicles actually crewed.
The Scottish Ambulance Service publishes a fleet list showing vehicles by vehicle type/style and base location. This information is reasonably accessible to the applicant and is therefore exempt under section 25(1) of FOISA. Please see SAS Frequently Asked Questions.
Fleet information held by SAS identifies vehicles understood to be operational vehicles or maintenance spares. SAS does not maintain fleet records identifying whether individual vehicles were actually crewed or available to respond to emergency calls at a particular point in time. Accordingly, this element of the requested information is not held in terms of section 17 of FOISA.
SAS vehicles are owned rather than leased.
At 31 March 2026, provide the employed workforce headcount and full-time equivalent by operational role and Agenda for Change band, including emergency ambulance clinicians/support staff, call handling/dispatch, and specialist response staff where separately recorded. Please identify bank and agency staff separately if included. Existing role or pay-band reports are sufficient.
Please see the attached spreadsheet containing the existing workforce reports held by the Scottish Ambulance Service as at 31 March 2026.
Employed workforce headcount and whole-time equivalent figures are provided within the Employee Headcount and Employee FTE worksheets. Bank staff are shown separately within the Bank Headcount and Bank FTE worksheets.
The information is presented according to the job family, job sub-family and Agenda for Change band classifications recorded within the workforce system. The reports cover the SAS workforce as a whole and are not limited exclusively to frontline or operational posts.
Specialist response staff are not separately identifiable within these reports and may be recorded under wider professional job classifications.
The figures represent a workforce snapshot and not the number of staff actually on duty or available for deployment on 31 March 2026.
For the given data, you will see that some of the figures are shown as less than five, please note
that this figure has been suppressed because the statistical value is less than five but greater that zero and a secondary suppression of *. 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.
At 31 March 2026, provide the number of ambulance stations, deployment hubs, control rooms and other permanent operational bases, using your own definitions. Please state if any temporary standby points are included.
At 31 March 2026, SAS recorded the following operational sites:
- 142 Ambulance Stations
- 13 Workshops
- 3 Ambulance Control Centres
- 6 Regional Headquarters
- 1 Disaster Recovery Centre
- 2 ScotSTAR sites
This represents a total of 167 operational sites and includes co-located sites. [FO126_300 July 2026 | Word]
The information has been provided using the existing site classifications recorded by SAS. Temporary standby points are not included in these figures.
For 2025/26, provide the number of specialist response teams and vehicles by type (for example HART, SORT, critical/urgent care or mental health response), and annual deployments by type if already held. Please distinguish trust/service-owned resources from partnership or charity resources.
SAS is withholding further information on the number of specialist response teams and vehicles by type under section 31(1) of FOISA. Although some high-level information about specialist resources is already publicly available, further disclosure would provide additional insight into SAS specialist operational capacity and capability.
On balance, we consider the public interest in protecting specialist emergency response capability outweighs the public interest in disclosure.
Recorded 2025/26 incident attendance figures for SORT response resources are provided below where held:
Resource Type
SORT Despatch Codes
Non SORT Despatch Codes
ACCIDENT & EMERGENCY *
<5
MANAGER
11
24
PARAMEDIC RESPONSE UNIT *
<5
20
SORT VEHICLE *
856
4,164
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 but greater that 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.
Further information about the Mental Health Cars and partnership/Charity resources is available through previous FOI's - FOI 26-456 Mental Health Cars and FOI 26-016 Mappable SAS Details
If already held as a separate figure, provide your 2025/26 income or commissioned funding attributable to emergency ambulance services, excluding NHS 111 or equivalent telephone advice services and non-emergency patient transport. Please identify the accounting definition. If this is not separately held, please say so and point me to the relevant published accounts.
The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold a separately recorded figure for 2025/26 income or commissioned funding attributable specifically to emergency ambulance services, excluding non-emergency Patient Transport Services.
SAS is primarily funded through NHS Scotland allocations provided by the Scottish Government. Information on the Service's overall funding and expenditure is reported through the Scottish Ambulance Service Annual Report and Accounts - Annual Report and Accounts
- Response Documents
