If you’re a journalist with a press enquiry, contact our communications team.
The NEAS communications team is always keen to work with journalists to promote the work we do across the North East and share our news with the wider community.
We’re also here to answer questions from members of the media relating to our service or incidents that have taken place in the region.
Making an enquiry
Press office hours are 9am-5pm Monday to Friday.
This service is provided by the NEAS communications team as one of a number of functions it manages.
The team handles hundreds of enquiries every year from local, regional, national and international journalists, and therefore – just like in a newsroom – we must prioritise our workload.
We prioritise tasks using our professional judgement and based on conversations with the journalist about deadlines, the angle of the story and its significance, the potential reputational impact as well as the seriousness of the incident.
We work with trained journalists, working on behalf of official media outlets. As a recognised media outlet, the organisation you work for will be regulated by a recognised code of ethics for print, online or broadcast media.
Unfortunately, we are unable to deal with requests from students or unregulated community news pages or bloggers.
If you are a journalist from a recognised media outlet with a press enquiry, please call the communications team on 0191 406 1269. This telephone number is available 24 hours a day but our response is limited out of hours.
If you are looking for a statement about an incident, please check the Statements section of our Newsroom first to see if we have already responded to a request about the same incident. Please note, it is unlikely we will be able to provide you any further information about the same incident over and above what is included in the published statement. If we have not published certain details, it is because we are not in a position to do so.
How we can help
When you make a media enquiry, we can help you with:
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Queries relating to recent press releases and news stories.
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Brief details of incidents in public places. Please note, the system we use to search for information is not set up for media enquiries so in order to help you we will need:
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the approximate time of the incident
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the approximate location – road/street and town/village
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the date of the incident
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a rough description of the incident
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Statement or interview requests relating to NEAS, including interviews with staff, volunteers and patients
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General questions about NEAS
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Filming requests on NEAS property
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Filming requests from TV production companies – these should always be made in writing and sent to publicrelations
@neas.nhs.uk
What can't we help you with?
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Speculative requests about road traffic collisions where you do not know if an ambulance is in attendance
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Details of incidents at private addresses
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Speculative requests about why ambulance crews are in a certain area without other information being provided
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Any patient details which are confidential or considered to be sensitive or potentially identifiable
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Confirming whether a patient has died
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Condition checks on patients that are no longer in our care. These enquiries should be directed to the relevant hospital.
Out of hours
The NEAS Communications Team operates an on-call service outside normal office hours.
Although our media enquiries number is available 24 hours a day, this is not a full out-of-hours press office. The on-call service is intended for urgent media enquiries only. Non-urgent enquiries received outside office hours may not be responded to until the next working day.
The press officer on call will not be working from an office environment and may be supporting other urgent communications matters. As a result, calls and messages cannot always be answered immediately.
Where an incident is ongoing, or has only recently concluded, it can take time to gather and verify information with operational colleagues before a statement can be issued. For this reason, journalists should be aware that responses may not always be immediate and we may be unable to provide detailed information within tight deadlines.
The out-of-hours team can assist with:
- Ongoing incidents (please note that incidents more than eight hours old will normally be dealt with on the next working day unless there are exceptional circumstances)
- Serious threats to the health of the community
- Major disruption to services
- Other genuinely urgent enquiries that cannot wait until the next working day
If your enquiry is not urgent, please email publicrelations@neas.nhs.uk and a member of the communications team will respond during normal office hours.