The North East Ambulance Service announces the shortlist for its 2025 staff recognition awards, the NEAS Awards: In the Spotlight.
The NEAS Awards are an opportunity for colleagues and patients to show their appreciation for ambulance service staff who have gone above and beyond the call of duty in the past year, and celebrate their achievements. This year’s awards are a first for NEAS chair Stuart Corbridge.
The service will celebrate its nominees at an awards evening at the Grand Hotel Gosforth Park in Newcastle on Friday 11 July.
NEAS employs over 3,800 staff, and supports up to 1,000 students and around 300 volunteers across 3,200 square miles between Berwick and Teesside.
In 2024/25, the service answered over 1.4 million 999 and 111 calls from across the region. Its frontline crews transported over 288,000 patients to hospital and treated over 139,000 patients at home. Its health advisors and clinicians also treated over 139,700 patients over the phone. The service’s patient transport service took over 555,400 patients to appointments at the region’s hospitals.
On the importance of colleague recognition, NEAS head of culture and staff experience, Victoria Wright said: “As an organisation, we are always looking to recognise the incredible work of our colleagues and celebrate their achievements. The NEAS Awards are not only an opportunity to do this, but also brings colleagues from across all four corners of our service together to celebrate, which is something we don’t often get the chance to do.
“This year’s nominations came in their hundreds, and broke records! It was a challenge narrowing down so many incredible submissions, but we’re very happy to be able to share our final shortlist today.
“Regardless as to whether you were shortlisted for an award this year, I hope each and every one of you who was nominated feels a great amount of pride in the work that you do and how you have touched the lives of our patients and colleagues. Congratulations all; see you in July!”
This year’s awards are sponsored by Ward Hadaway, the University of Teesside, Unison, Sintons, Talk Works, MGI, and Serve and Protect. You can read the full sponsorship announcement story here: https://
The shortlist is as follows:
Excellence and Innovation
- Melissa Crulley
- Research team: Karl Charlton, Matt Limmer, Gary Shaw, Sarah Hepburn, Laura Blair, Emma Burrow, Michelle Jackson
- Tom Crow and Amanda Rooney
- Emmanuel Okutue
Working in Partnership
- Empower, estates, and staff experience: Joanne Donnelly, Ellie May Sansum, Rachel Wood, Johnny Lawson, Michelle Sinton, Julia Rielly, Katie Smith, Lesley Anderson, Marzia Mahzabin
- Carabao Cup planning team: Luke Evans, Brad B. Brooks, Malcom Leech, Peter P. Smith, Anthony Brockbank, David Graham, Andrew Taylor, Nicholas Ritchie, Robin Raymond, Phil Nicholson, Joanne Marley, Richard Barker, Alex C. Mason, Olivia Ashburn, Paul Tarbit, Donna Hay, Marianne Walton, Andrew P. Cuthbertson, Andrew B. Williams, Beverley J. Smith, resilience, education team, equipment team, volunteer teams, stores, fleet, patient transport service
- Andrea Raine
- Hayley Stagg and Jake Bays
Leader of the Year
- Joanne Parkin
- Alan Potts
- Dave Morgan
- Kerry Cowell
- Claire Johnson
Compassionate Care
- Kayley Bell
- Nadine Cowley and Andrew Traynor
- Ashley Nicholson
- Debbie Mattinson
- Amanda Hilton
Inclusion and Respect
- Research team: Karl Charlton, Matt Limmer, Gary Shaw, Sarah Hepburn, Laura Blair, Emma Burrow, Michelle Jackson
- Emma Troop
- Shumel Rahman, Sandeep Wales, Loveness Scott
- Sian Kinelato
Outstanding contribution – team
- Wellbeing Walks leaders: Shannon Barthram, Jack Brown, Simon Proctor, Mark Johns, Chris Aird, Kerry Auld, Gail Brown, Rich Mather, Vince McCluskey, Paul Younger, Andy Walton
- Communications team: Sam Reed, Ebony Colledge, Kelly Shutler, Amy Watkins, Bethany Robson, Joseph Tweddle, Melanie Colman
- Regulatory services team: Andrew Lumsden, Dawn Atkinson, Debora Hind, Michael Baxter, Chloe Delbarre, Danielle Rees, Alan Middleton, Marcus McGuire, Steven Charlton, Steven Wright, Dawn Whitfield, Graeme Scott, Joanne Metcalfe, Ashleigh Corbett
- Patient transport service transformation: Aaron Bahanda, Andrew Brown, Sid Jackson, Mark Hagan, Melissa Crulley, Alison Green, Claire Glister, Rachel Skeotch, Amy Rosindale, Adam Ratcliffe, Ali Chapman, Andrea Thompson, Bartholomew Onerhime, Daniel Crawford, Emily Grant, Emily Turnbull, Jennifer Stobbs, Leena Mulholland, Marton Small, Steven Pratt, Emma Leather, Jonathan Knox
Outstanding contribution – unscheduled care
- Jack Yews
- Matthew Storey
- Niki Thompson
- Stephen Greenwood
Outstanding contribution – patient transport service
- Courteney Thompson
- Catherine Massey
- Lynsey Richardson
- Bob Bell
- Philip Carter
Outstanding contribution – emergency operations centre
- Ryan Swann and Dylan McDermott
- Simon Proctor
- Lara Rawlinson
- Olivia Salem-Fenwick
Outstanding contribution – support services
- Carley Dickinson
- Emma Leather
- Ruth Hardy
- Pauline Hogarth
- Lora Irving
Unsung Hero
- Alan Gallagher
- Brian Taylor
- Gemma Hollingsworth
- Paul Horner
- Andrew Lilley
- Wayne Ramsay
- Jonathan Tones
- Dawn Mayne
Chairs’ Rising Star Award
- Farhan (Mian) Shah
- Tia Richardson
- Samuel Adekunle
- Melissa MacGillivray
Patient Choice
- Stacey Fox and Neil Lumsdon
- Tegan Duffy and Ryan King
- Danielle Scott, Andrew Wilson, David Jubb, and Diane Moon
- Rachel Clarke and Gary McKenzie
- Bryan Cox, Mia Honeyman, and Leslie Allison
- Vincent Potter
- Hope Burrows, Annabel Faulkner, Bobbie Dove, and Lauren Schofield
- Jack Beattie
Education and Training
- Christina Hunter
- Marc Marshall
- Andrew Woods
- Jenny Pattison
- Abid Ishaq