Private ambulances phased out of South Yorkshire 999 services after £5m spending peak
Yorkshire Ambulance Service spent more than £5 million on private ambulances in South Yorkshire in a single year as it brought in extra crews and vehicles to cope with rising demand and hospital handover delays.
Data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act service shows spending on private ambulance services increased from £2.78m in 2021/22 to a peak of £5.14m in 2023/24, before falling to £4.35m in 2024/25 and £2.41m in 2025/26.
The figures also show private providers attended thousands of emergency and urgent incidents during the five-year period.
In 2023/24, private ambulance providers responded to 6,178 999 calls and 6,694 requests from healthcare professionals. They also carried out 4,680 emergency inter-facility transfers and 108,920 pre-arranged, non-emergency patient transport journeys
But by 2025/26, private providers were no longer being used for 999 calls, healthcare-professional requests, inter-facility transfers or routine journeys. Their work was limited to 93,364 pre-arranged Patient Transport Service journeys.
A Yorkshire Ambulance Service spokesperson said: “Yorkshire Ambulance Service carried out a planned and phased reduction of the use of private ambulances in line with additional staff recruitment and the acquisition of more emergency ambulances over the last few years.
“Previously, private providers were used to increase the operational capacity to meet increased demand and have only been used for non-emergency patient transport journeys in the last financial year. We have no plans to utilise private ambulances to deliver 999 services.”
The trust said its non-emergency patient transport service was delivered mainly using YAS-owned vehicles operated by its own staff, supplemented by private ambulances and taxis.
Across the region, the service made more than 675,000 journeys transporting eligible patients to and from hospital and treatment-centre appointments in 2025/26.
During the same year, staff in YAS’s Emergency Operations Centre received 1.25 million emergency and routine calls, an average of around 3,400 a day, and the service responded to more than 909,000 emergency incidents, either by sending a vehicle or providing advice by telephone.