Ambulance Quality Indicators

This contains the Ambulance Systems Indicators (AmbSYS) and Clinical Outcomes (AmbCO) for all eleven Ambulance Services in England.

The following webpages are / were updated monthly, with the latest Statistical Notes and monthly spreadsheets:

Time series data

In the following interactive spreadsheets, you can select whether to view data for all England, an individual NHS Ambulance Service, or a region.

AmbSYS time series to October 2025 (xlsx, 3.11MB) (published on 13 November 2025): AmbSYS from August 2017 to the latest published month, against specification 20230825 below
AmbCO time series to June 2025 (xlsx, 1.7MB) (published on 13 November 2025): AmbCO from April 2011 to the latest published month, against specifications v1.31 and 20210610 below

CSV data

These comma-separated value (csv) files have the same data as the above spreadsheets, but they have no formatting, and none of the footnotes that advise where there are breaks in the Time Series:

AmbSYS October 2017 to October 2025 (csv, 1.2MB) (published on 13 November 2025)
AmbCO June 2011 to June 2025 (csv, 0.6MB) (published on 13 November 2025)

Timetable

This shows publication dates (including for revisions) and due dates for data collection.

2024-25 AQI Publication Timetable (pdf, 31KB) (updated on 3 December 2024)
2025-26 AQI Publication Timetable (pdf, 30KB) (added on 17 February 2025)

Current data specification

The following documents contain the specification guidance for data suppliers on what NHS England require.

20250117 AmbSYS specification (pdf, 0.4MB) for AmbSYS data from 1 October 2023 onwards (published on 17 January 2025)
20210610 AmbCO data specification (pdf, 291KB) for AmbCO data (published on 10 June 2021)
20241114 AmbCO specification addendum (pdf, 141KB) AmbCO data (published on 14 November 2024)
20241114 AmbSYS AmbCO indicator list (xlsx, 32KB) for AmbSYS and AmbCO data (published on 14 November 2024)

Superseded data specifications

20190912 AmbSYS specification (pdf, 389KB) for AmbSYS data from June 2018 to September 2022
20170926 AmbSYS specification (docx, 70KB) for AmbSYS data from autumn 2017 to June 2018

AmbSYS and AmbCO together:

AQI Guidance v1.31 (docx, 173KB): up to January 2016
AQI Guidance v1.4 (docx, 202KB): from January 2016 to autumn 2017
AQI Guidance v3.0 (docx, 113KB): for the three Trusts that used Categories C1 to C4 from October 2016 to autumn 2017

Clinical Outcomes definitions are unchanged in the above three documents.

20180412 STEMI and stroke timeliness specification (pdf, 149KB): additional STEMI and Stroke AmbCO from November 2017

Standards

The government pledges on Ambulance waiting times are in the Handbook to the NHS Constitution.
The categories used by Ambulance Services to prioritise emergency incidents are within the description of the Ambulance Response Programme.

Supporting information

Hospital handovers from the Daily Ambulance Collection supplied by Ambulance Trusts and split by NHS Trust;
and Category 2 response times from the weekly scorecard collection split by Integrated Care Board:
Ambulance: Management Information

This statement describes the quality of the statistics, along with a revisions policy, and information on user engagement:
AQI Quality Statement v1.2 (pdf, 356KB)

Old AmbSYS Time Series to March 2018 (xlsx, 658KB) (published on 10 May 2018): AmbSYS from April 2011, against specifications v1.31 and v1.4 above.
Also available as a CSV, without formatting or footnotes: Old AmbSYS April 2011 to March 2018 (csv, 211KB) (published on 10 May 2018).

Also available in an alternative presentation including AmbCO data, a map, call process flowchart, and embedded PDF narrative, but only up to March 2016 data:
ACQI Dashboard April 2011 to March 2016 (xls, 5,967KB)

The Ambulance Services publication by the Health and Social Care Information Centre contains statistics from the KA34 data collection 2004-05 to 2012-13, which are similar but not directly comparable with the AmbSYS data. It also contains AmbSYS data for 2013-14 and 2014-15.

Weekly Category A response times from 7 November 2010 to 29 May 2011 are still available on our archive website: Ambulance Weekly Sitreps.

Rest of UK

Wales ambulance data from Welsh Ambulance Services University NHS Trust published by NHS Wales Joint Commissioning Committee.
Scotland ambulance data in Quality Improvement Indicators documents from the Scottish Ambulance Service.
Northern Ireland ambulance data in Emergency Care statistics from the NI Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety.

Contact details

NHS England Media Team: 0113 825 0958 or nhsengland.media@nhs.net.

The person responsible for this publication is:
Ian Kay, Operational Insights, Transformation Directorate, NHS England
england.999iucdata@nhs.net
07918 336050

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