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Ambulance response times in your area

In September 2026 the average (mean) Category 2 ambulance response time in England was 31 min 18 sec against the 18 minute standard, and none of the 11 ambulance services met it; the Category 1 mean was 7 min 59 sec against the 7 minute standard. These are published monthly figures by ambulance service, not live waits.

Which ambulance service covers you, and how fast is it?

Ambulance response times by postcode: the lookup uses postcodes.io, and if it fails the page matches the postcode area from a table and says the match is approximate.

How long does an ambulance take? The standards by category

  • Category 1, calls from people with life threatening illnesses or injuries: 7 minutes on average, and 9 in 10 within 15 minutes.
  • Category 2, emergency calls: 18 minutes on average, and 9 in 10 within 40 minutes.
  • Category 3, urgent calls: 9 in 10 within 2 hours.
  • Category 4, less urgent calls: 9 in 10 within 3 hours.

The 90th centile is the time within which 9 in 10 incidents had a response. NHS England’s planning target for the Category 2 mean was 30 minutes on average across April 2025 to March 2026, and is 25 minutes for April 2026 to March 2027; the charts measure each month against the standards above.

Category 2 ambulance response times, August 2017 to September 2026

Mean response time to Category 2 calls each month in England. Standard: 18 minutes on average.

Category
Measure

Average ambulance response time by service: Category 2, September 2026

Mean response time to Category 2 calls in September 2026 by ambulance service, slowest first, with England for reference. Standard: 18 minutes on average.

Source: NHS England, Ambulance Quality Indicators, Systems Indicators (AmbSYS). Standards: Handbook to the NHS Constitution for England. Categories: NHS England, Ambulance Response Programme. Planning targets: NHS England, 2025/26 priorities and operational planning guidance and Medium Term Planning Framework.

Edition: figures to September 2026, published 8 October 2026.

Next release: 12 November 2026 (October 2026 figures), then monthly on the second Thursday, from NHS England’s publication timetable.

Data limits: These are published monthly performance figures by ambulance service, not live waits, and the postcode finder says which service covers an area, not how long an ambulance takes to reach a particular street. Categories and clock start points are those of the Ambulance Response Programme, which these figures follow from August 2017, so nothing here compares with the Freedom of Information figures on the 2015 map described below, which used the earlier Red 1, Red 2 and Category A definitions. Services began reporting on these categories between August 2017 and April 2018, so England figures before April 2018 cover only the services then reporting, and England figures for October and November 2022 exclude London. England’s 90th centile is NHS England’s average of the services’ 90th centiles, weighted by incidents. NHS England’s June and December releases include revisions, so figures here can change on 10 December 2026. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland publish separately: the Scottish Ambulance Service each week and StatsWales each month, both on different categories, and the Department of Health (Northern Ireland) once a year. Figures here run to September 2026.

Data limits: published monthly performance by ambulance service, not live waits; figures to September 2026.

Postcode lookup: postcodes.io. Built by Totally.Digital.

The 2015 map: In 2015 Totally.Digital, then called Totally Communications, built ambulanceresponsetimes.co.uk, a postcode map of ambulance response times to life threatening calls, from 14 Freedom of Information requests, one to each UK ambulance service; 13 answered and the Isle of Wight NHS Trust refused. It showed the median response time in each postcode district for the 2013 to 2014 financial year, on the Red 1, Red 2 and Category A definitions then in use. It was covered by the Guardian Datablog on 1 May 2015, Google Maps Mania and the Daily Record. The old site is no longer online, and those figures cannot be compared with the categories used since 2017, so the work now lives on this page.