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About North East Ambulance Service

The North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (NEAS) operates across Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, County Durham, Darlington and Teesside. We provide an Unscheduled Care Service to respond to emergency calls, and a Scheduled Care service which provides pre-planned non-emergency transport for patients in the region.

Since 2013 we have delivered the NHS 111 service for the region to provide urgent medical help and advice, and we have been able to demonstrate how this service can run alongside the 999 service to provide a seamless access point for patients.

The video below shows how we're integrating urgent and emergency care in our region:

The Emergency Care, 111 and Patient Transport Services are supported by the Trust's Emergency Operations Centres based at Newburn Riverside and Hebburn, which manage in excess of 1.5 million calls per annum.

We also deliver specialist response services through our Hazardous Area Response Team (HART). HART units are made up of specially trained paramedics who deal with major incidents. Our front line services are delivered from 61 stations across the North East region.

We became a Foundation Trust in November 2011 and are one of ten ambulance services in England, covering an area of around 3,230 square miles.  We serve a population of more than 2.71 million people and employ more than 2,500 staff including our valued volunteers.

Volunteer porters, ambulance car service drivers and community first responders invest thousands of hours in the service every year. They provide invaluable support to our patients, from helping patients to reach their appointments through to providing essential life support in the most serious of cases. Find out more about how you can become a volunteer here.

The Trust also works closely with a number of voluntary organisations, such as St. John's Ambulance Service and the British Red Cross.

NEAS also provides first aid training on a commercial basis to organisations in the public and private sector.

A list of director portfolios can be found here.

You can find out more about all of these aspects of our work by exploring the website.

Our mission is to provide safe, effective and responsive care for all, and our vision is to deliver unmatched quality of care every time we touch lives. Even in the most challenging situations we strive to perform to the highest professional standards in a spirit of collaboration and team work. Caring for and treating more patients closer to home is at the heart of our plans, and our committed, compassionate and caring staff are critical to our success.

Our Partners

The Trust forms an integral part of the health service across the North East and works closely with many NHS partners to ensure services for patients are joined-up and as effective as possible.  Our local partners include 8 acute hospital trusts, 2 mental health trusts, 12 local unitary authorities, police and fire services and voluntary agencies. 

The majority of our services are commissioned by 10 Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) across the region, in conjunction with the North of England Commissioning Support unit (NECs). CCGs are clinically led statutory NHS bodies responsible for the planning and commissioning of healthcare services for their local area.

We also work closely with NHS England, whose main role is to set the priorities and direction of the NHS and to improve health and care outcomes for people in England.

We work very closely with Health Education North East in the development of new training programmes, including for our Advanced Practitioners, enabling us to offer enhanced care for our patients.

The Trust has long established relationships with local authorities’ overview and scrutiny committees in the North East and meets with them regularly.  Overview and scrutiny committees are dedicated to scrutinising local NHS policy, planning, and impact against local needs and inequalities. Each health overview and scrutiny committee devises a work programme which may call for reports on any aspect of local NHS activity so that it can hold both commissioners and providers to account.  

We also work closely with local health and well-being boards, which are forums for local commissioners across the NHS, social care, public health and other services to meet together with local authorities to set priorities and make strategic decisions about health provision.

We have good relationships with our regional universities, including undertaking joint research and development. We work very closely with Teesside University which offer two paramedic courses in the region.  We are also delighted to be partnering with Sunderland University to launch a new two year Diploma of Higher Education in Paramedic Practice in 2016.

We have piloted a successful co-responding approach with our regional fire and rescue service colleagues.  This has provided improved timely responsiveness to our patients, and enhanced our ability to jointly provide care. 

The Trust, Northumbria Police, Cleveland Police and Durham Constabulary hold regular meetings at a strategic, tactical and operational level working on various initiatives. This includes delivery of the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Programme (JESIP) which is focused on ensuring that the police, fire and rescue and ambulance services are able to work together effectively when responding to major multi-agency incidents.

We work in partnership with local organisations to promote health and well-being within the region. In 2015, for example, we worked closely with Balance, the North East Alcohol Office, to educate the public on the effects of alcohol on our service. This highlighted the impact on our ability to respond to other patients, as well as the high instances of verbal and physical abuse encountered by our staff. The campaign received significant national and local media coverage and formed an important part of our public education agenda. We have also worked with local media to highlight both the medical dangers of using legal highs and the impact that they have had on our service over the last year.

Register of Interests, Gifts and Hospitality Register and Board Fit and Proper Persons Requirements

The Trust Board can confirm that it maintains a register of interest and the current version can be found under the Board of Directors section. A separate register is maintained for interests declared by senior managers and other Trust staff.

The Trust maintains a register of gifts and hospitality in accordance with the NHS Contract and the Trust's own Standards of Business Conduct policy.

The Trust confirms that it has applied Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014: Regulation 5: Fit and Proper Persons (Directors). The purpose of the Regulation is to ensure that all Board level appointments of NHS bodies carrying out a regulated activity are fit and proper to carry out the role of overseeing the quality and safety of care provided by the body. This means that Board Members should be of good character, have the required skills, experience and knowledge and that their health enables them to fulfil the management function. None of the criteria of unfitness should apply, which include bankruptcy, sequestration and insolvency, appearing on barred lists and being prohibited from holding directorships under other laws. Board Members should not have been involved or complicit in any serious misconduct, mismanagement or failure of care in carrying out a regulated activity.

Rigorous checks are carried out during recruitment and appointment, and  on-going compliance is assessed annually.

Cabinet Office: National Fraud Initiative (NFI)

North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust is required to protect the public funds it administers. It may share information provided to it with other bodies responsible for auditing, or administering public funds, or where undertaking a public function in order to prevent and detect fraud.

The Cabinet Office is responsible for carrying out data matching exercises.

Data matching involves comparing sets of data such as the payroll records of a body against other records held by the same or another body to see how far they match.  The data is usually personal information. The data matching allows potentially fraudulent claims and payments to be identified.  Where a match is found it may indicate that there is an inconsistency which requires further investigation.  No assumption can be made as to whether there is fraud, error or another explanation until an investigation is carried out.

We are a mandatory participant in the Cabinet Office’s National Fraud Initiative; a data matching exercise to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud.  We are required to provide particular sets of data to the Minister for the Cabinet Office for matching each exercise, as detailed here on the www.gov.uk website. For further information on how the Trust uses your information, please refer to the Trust’s Privacy Statement. 

The processing of data by the Cabinet Office in a data matching exercise is carried out with statutory authority under its powers in Part 6 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014.  It does not require the consent of the individuals concerned under data protection legislation or the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

Data matching by the Cabinet Office is subject to a code of data matching practice, also available on the www.gov.uk website.

The Cabinet Office has published its Data Privacy notice, which sets out how the Cabinet Office will use your personal data and your rights. The notice is made under Article 14 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The legal basis for processing your personal data is that processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the data controller.

We want you to know that we take privacy very seriously.  Please be assured that we will always manage your data securely and responsibly.

For further information on data matching at this organisation, please contact the Counter Fraud team on 0191 441 5936 or email counterfraud@audit-one.co.uk.