- Ambulance service
St John Ambulance North Region
Report from 5 June 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings - Patient transport services
Our view of the service
St John Ambulance North Region delivers the transport services of the North West and North Wales paediatric transfer service (NWTS) and the North West neonatal transport service, Connect Northwest. In addition, within the last 12 months they have continued to support the NHS ambulance services including North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) from this location.
Until June 2025 St John Ambulance North Region had a contract for emergency and urgent care services across the North West dealing with all categories of calls for NHS ambulance and hospital trusts. Since February 2025, a contract variation was agreed to allow St John Ambulance resources to support within acute hospital trust emergency departments to facilitate early crew handover of patients and to free those crews up to return to the road.
We commenced a responsive assessment on 5 June 2025 because of concerns around the environment, medicines, vehicles, recruitment, cleanliness, culture and leadership. We carried out an unannounced inspection during 1 to 2 July 2025.
We assessed 10 quality statements from the safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led key questions to give the rating.
During the inspection, we visited the Stockport and Warrington hubs. We also spoke with staff, managers, leaders and we looked at policies and other documents relating to the service.
Our rating of patient transport services at this location stayed the same. We rated it as good.
The service trained staff in hand hygiene as part of the infection prevention and control, but hand hygiene audits had not been undertaken to verify staff compliance. The service told us they planned to develop a targeted approach to improve compliance in this area.
The service had enough suitably trained staff to care for people and keep them safe. Staff received effective support, supervision and development, they protected people from abuse and managed incidents and medicines well. The environment was clean and well-maintained.
The service had made improvements to processes for the servicing of vehicles. We saw improvements had been made to the detail on the organisational risk register since the last inspection.
The service had made some improvements to the documented processes for performing their responsibilities under duty of candour; however, the policy was overdue for review.
Leaders ran services well. There were clear and effective governance, management and accountability arrangements. Leaders promoted a positive work culture based on equality, diversity and inclusion. Staff felt respected, supported and valued. Leaders engaged well with partners and the community to plan and manage services.
People's experience of this service
St John Ambulance North had a patient experience framework providing an accessible feedback procedure for patients and their representatives. We saw compliments about the patient transport staff crew demonstrating their skilled driving and support when communicating with patients/parents.
Examples of compliments about the patient transport crew included: “Brilliant transfer and kept me reassured. Excellent, professional driving, child got to critical care to be given a chance”. “All the team felt safe, comfortable and able to concentrate on the care the child needed, during the journey”. “The transfer went smoothly”.
The provision of regulated activities were subcontracted by third party NHS organisations; therefore, we were not able to speak with people using the service.