The East Midlands Ambulance Service has announced a £4 million investment in January 2026 to expand its clinical call hub and improve response times for residents in Beeston, Nottinghamshire. This funding has allowed the service to hire more than 50 additional staff members, including specialist nurses and paramedics, to provide expert medical advice over the phone.
Dr. Steven Dykes, the Clinical Director for the East Midlands Ambulance Service, explained that the hub is increasingly important as more people seek help for complex health conditions. The new staff use their experience to provide advice or refer patients to community care rather than sending a vehicle to every call.
By managing less serious cases over the phone, the service can keep more ambulances available for life-threatening emergencies like heart attacks or strokes. Figures from the ambulance trust show that this way of working has already helped reduce response times for the most serious calls by an average of 22 minutes.
On busy days, the service can handle as many as 4,000 calls across the region, making this telephone assessment a vital part of keeping the system moving. It is estimated that about one in five calls is now safely handled without an ambulance ever needing to leave the station.
Local leaders at Broxtowe Borough Council say the investment supports their wider goals for a healthier and safer community. The service also plans to modernise its fleet with 100 new vehicles alongside these improvements to call handling.
