North West Ambulance Service
The North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust is the ambulance service for North West England. It is one of 10 Ambulance Trusts providing England with Emergency medical services, and is part of the National Health Service, receiving direct government funding for its role.
NWAS was formed on 1 July 2006 following the merger of four previous services as part of Health Minister Lord Warner's plans to combine ambulance services.
Based in Bolton, the new trust provides services to almost 7 million people in Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Merseyside, Lancashire, Cumbria, and the North Western fringes of the High Peak district of Derbyshire in an area of some. There is no charge to patients for use of the service, and under the Patient's charter, every person in the United Kingdom has the right to the attendance of an ambulance in an emergency.
NWAS provides emergency ambulance response via the 999 system, as well as operating the NHS 111 advice service for North West England.
They also operate non-emergency patient transport services, and in 2013/2014 carried out 1.2 million such journeys. Since 2016, the PTS in Cheshire, Warrington and Wirral has instead been carried out by West Midlands Ambulance Service.
Fleet
NWAS utilise a mixed fleet of emergency ambulances, mainly based on the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter or Fiat Ducato, the former consisting of a demountable box body on a chassis, and the latter a van conversion. The Trust uses Skoda Octavia estates as the main Rapid response car although since 2017 begun using BMW i3 electric cars and use Renault Masters for Intermediate, Urgent care and Patient Transport vehicles. In Central Manchester, some paramedics respond on specially converted bicycles.Locations and structure
The trust currently operates from 104 ambulance stations across the North West. The most northerly station is at Carlisle, and the furthest south is at Crewe. It also maintains three Emergency Operations Centres for the handling of 999 calls and dispatch of emergency ambulances.- Parkway
- Estuary Point – formerly Elm House
- Broughton
Over recent years, the trust has combined many of their older ambulance stations into purpose-built facilities shared with other emergency services, including Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue, Lancashire Fire and Rescue and Greater Manchester Police.
Structure
Since NWAS was formed in 2006, the trust adopted blue epaulettes to by worn by its staff to denote their clinical grade and rank. Prior to this, Greater Manchester Ambulance Service staff wore bottle-green epaulettes matching the colour of their uniform.Following the creation of a National NHS Ambulance Service Uniform in 2015/2016, NWAS like many other trusts changed their epaulettes to dark green in order to match the colour of the new uniform which it gradually integrated alongside a structure change. In 2018, following a recommendation from the Kerslake Report into the Manchester Area Bombing, Red epaulettes were introduced for senior clinicians to make them easy to identify at larger incidents. Typically, NWAS uses the following Organisational Structure:
| Role | Service | Notes |
| Ambulance Care Assistant | Patient Transport Service | Band 2 or 3 |
| Advanced Ambulance Care Assistant | Urgent Care Service | Band 3 |
| Emergency Medical Technician 1 | Paramedic Emergency Service | Band 4 |
| Emergency Medical Technician 2 | Paramedic Emergency Service | Band 5 |
| Newly Qualified Paramedic | Paramedic Emergency Service | Band 5 |
| Paramedic | Paramedic Emergency Service | Band 6 |
| Senior Paramedic Team Leader | Paramedic Emergency Service | Band 7 |
| Operations Manager | Paramedic Emergency Service | Band 7, operationally responsible for a large ambulance station |
| Advanced Paramedic | Paramedic Emergency Service | Band 7, clinically responsible for a large ambulance station, works alongside an OM. |
| Sector Manager | Paramedic Emergency Service | Band 8b, operationally responsible for a geographic sector |
| Consultant Paramedic | Medical Directorate | Band 8b, clinically responsible for a geographic area and works alongside HoS |
| Head of Service | Service Delivery | Director responsible for a geographic or service area |
| Chief Consultant Paramedic | Medical Directorate | Works alongside AMD & MD's as senior paramedic lead. Clinically responsible for all CP's |
| Deputy Director & Directors of Service | E.g. Deputy Director of Operations, Assistant Medical Directors | |
| Executive Directors | E.g. Executive Director of Operations, Executive Medical Director | |
| Deputy Chief Executive Officer | ||
| Chief Executive Officer |