Huge demand for the ambulance service

Thursday 15 October 2026

Escalation to REAP 4

Dear colleagues,

East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) has escalated to Level 4 of our Resource Escalation Action Plan (REAP), the highest alert level, reflecting a sustained extreme pressure on our service.

Increased volume of 999 calls, patients waiting for a response in the community, and significant patient handover delays at hospitals mean there is a higher concern for service delivery and risk to patient safety.

To provide the fastest possible response to patients in the community experiencing life-threatening emergencies, we are:

• Dealing with some of the increased demand via ‘hear and treat’ by experienced clinicians in our control rooms, triaging patients to identify alternative services for their needs.
• Taking fewer or similar number of patients to hospital than normal
• Deploying more ambulance resource than ever before

We continue to ask people to only call 999 in life-threatening emergencies. NHS111 are best placed to help when it’s not an emergency.

Thank you for sharing these public education messages from EMAS channels on to your own social media channels.

Thank you to our partners taking all possible actions to ensure ambulance resources can handover patients as quickly as possible.

Susannah Ashton
EMAS Strategic Commander