The Service will host its annual staff recognition awards event on 11 July at the Grand Hotel Gosforth Park in Newcastle. Partnering organisations sponsor not only award categories, but also provide funding to make the Service’s celebrations possible for its lifesaving attendees.
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.
Nominations for the awards, including public nominations for the Patients’ Choice award, closed in March. In total, the service’s staff received over 430 nominations from their colleagues and patients across the region.
Stuart Corbridge is the chair of the ambulance service and will open July’s ceremony and present the Chair’s Award.
He said: “We are incredibly grateful to our sponsors and thank them for their donations to our staff awards this year. Sponsorships allow us to make our celebrations special for incredible colleagues who have gone above and beyond for their colleagues and patients over the past year.
“Our staff awards are a way to give back to them and show them how proud we are to have them as members of our service. Thank you to our sponsors for helping make this possible.”
Award categories recognise achievements across the service in:
- Excellence and Innovation
- Working in Partnership
- Leader of the Year
- Education and Training
- Compassionate Care
- Inclusion and Respect
- Outstanding Contribution: Team
- Outstanding Contribution: Unscheduled Care
- Outstanding Contribution: Scheduled Care
- Outstanding Contribution: Emergency Operations Centre (EOC)
- Outstanding Contribution: Support Services
- Unsung Hero Award
- Chairs’ Rising Star
Silver sponsor, Ailsa Hobson, is senior associate at Sintons. She said: “The NHS and the work it does is one of the greatest benefits we all have from living in the UK. NHS employees work around the clock to ensure the health and wellbeing of everyone in the UK. We feel it is important to stop and recognise their efforts and we are really excited to be able to do this by sponsoring this event. We want to support NEAS in saying “thanks” to its people who are out there helping others everyday of their lives.”
Ruth Mitchell, associate dean at Teeside University said,
“It was important for us to sponsor the NEAS Awards as we have a close and longstanding working relationship with NEAS for many years. We have enjoyed collaborating on a range of activities including the delivery of the BSc (Hons) paramedic practice, the paramedic apprenticeship and a range of CPD, to name a few!
“The event last year was inspirational and showcased some of the great work NEAS and its staff do. We feel that it is important to celebrate this success and are happy to be part of the celebrations.
“The work all NEAS staff do is invaluable and makes a huge difference to the patients they care for. This work is often carried out in challenging circumstances and staff just quietly get on with this work. Spending time to formally celebrate the many achievements of NEAS colleagues and to thank them for their contribution, is what we are looking forward to and why we felt it important to support this event.”
Last year’s winners included Rachel Wood who said, “I have worked for NEAS for fourteen years and being shortlisted for and winning a 2024 In The Spotlight award was certainly a highlight of my career. I won my award for work I had done for our emergency operations centre colleagues, in the creation of a new wellbeing initiative to support them during their careers.
“This project was very important to me due to my background as a health advisor and senior health advisor for many years, as I knew how challenging it could be to answer the kinds of calls our health advisors get from patients in their most vulnerable times of need.
“To know that this work improved things for colleagues, so much so that they took time to nominate me, really meant the world and reinforced to me that the little gestures do have big impacts on our busy working lives.”
Unison Northern is another of the organisations providing silver sponsorship coverage for the service’s awards evening. Regional organiser, Alex Samuels, said: “As a trade union, ensuring our members are valued in their work by employers is a big part of who we are and what we do. Seeing people celebrated for their achievements reminds us of the incredible work NEAS staff do for the region, day-in-day-out. It is also nice to see people in their finery and enjoying themselves!”
The 2025 event has also received additional support from – Ward Hadaway, the University of Teesside, Talk Works, Mary Gover International, and Serve and Protect.
