AQW 38376/22-27

Ms Claire Sugden
Independent
East Londonderry

Tabled Date: 16/01/2026
Answered On Date: 02/02/2026
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Health to detail any actions he is taking to reduce ambulance handover delays at Emergency Departments, to ensure ambulances return to service promptly.

Answer:

My Department recognises the challenges faced by emergency departments (EDs) and has worked closely with Health and Social Care Trusts and community services to implement a range of actions aimed at improving patient flow and reducing delays.

To help alleviate pressures in EDs, my Department has implemented a range of targeted initiatives. These include the expansion of urgent care centres, Phone First Services and minor injury units, offering patients timely alternatives to ED attendance.

Ahead of the present winter period, my Department worked with the Royal College of Emergency Medicine and Trusts to appoint an additional 18 emergency medicine consultants to work in EDs across Northern Ireland. A further ten consultants completed their training in December 2025 and it is anticipated that they will also be recruited locally to provide further resilience and senior decision-making capacity to our EDs.

I am determined to find better ways to work as a system to tackle waiting times in EDs. That is why I initiated a series of winter planning workshops to identify solutions to the system flow issues that we collectively face. I attended the first of these events on 4 March 2025 and was encouraged by the engagement and enthusiasm from HSC leaders across the system. The workshop saw attendance from a diverse group of stakeholders within our system, including Royal Colleges, clinicians, and other frontline services.

In August 2025, my Department held a regional workshop with senior management and clinicians from Trusts and the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS), which focused on improving ambulance handover times. Input was provided from the London Ambulance Service and King George Hospital in London where they have been successful in reducing ambulance handover delays. My Department is working with NIAS and the Trusts to finalise ambulance handover guidance, based on the experience of the London model in order to improve ambulance handover times and release ambulances more quickly to respond to calls in the community.

Trusts in Northern Ireland have been asked to implement changes to move towards this protocol. Incremental improvement targets for Phase 1 were agreed with Trusts that by 1 December 2025 there would be no ambulance handover delays in excess of two hours outside an ED, whilst also ensuring there was no deterioration in delays in excess of 15, 30 and 60 minutes. Once the 2-hour milestone is achieved, we will move towards meeting the 15-minute standard.

Since the introduction of the phased approach, there have been around 800 fewer handover delays exceeding two hours compared to the same period in 2024. In December, several hospitals demonstrated strong performance against the 2hour threshold, with less than 20% of ambulance arrivals delayed over two hours. This included the Mater Hospital (8%), South West Acute Hospital (10%), Altnagelvin Hospital (13%), Daisy Hill Hospital (15%), and the Royal Victoria Hospital (16%), which reflects focused efforts to improve patient flow and reduce prolonged waits.

With regard to NIAS capacity and system flow, to support improved ambulance offload and response times, my Department has repurposed £10 million to fund targeted initiatives across Trusts. These measures include:

The expansion of Hospital at Home services in Belfast, South Eastern, and Northern Trusts, increasing community-based capacity;

Additional short stay inpatient beds (for example, eight in Altnagelvin) and intermediate care beds (for example, 12 in the Western Trust) to facilitate timely discharge;

Frailty assessment and multidisciplinary team reviews at the front door of acute hospitals;

Expansion of Same Day Emergency Care and ambulatory pathways across acute medicine, respiratory, cardiology, and surgical specialties; and,

Enhanced capacity for Early Review Teams and Discharge Coordination.

These measures are embedded within each Trust’s Unscheduled Care Improvement Plan, developed in collaboration with the Regional Co-ordination Centre and informed by the ‘Big Discussion’ workshops.

Ultimately, all of these measures are aimed at improving flow throughout hospitals, reducing ambulance handover times and congestion in our EDs and improving waiting times.

These efforts are part of a broader system-wide approach to ensure patients receive timely, safe, and effective care, both within EDs and across the wider health and social care system.