public services · the national record
How long an ambulance takes to arrive in England: monthly response times
An ambulance took 29m 49s on average to reach a Category 2 emergency such as a stroke or heart attack in England in July 2026, against an 18 minute target, and 8m 00s to reach the most serious, life threatening Category 1 calls against a 7 minute target. Both are NHS England's own published Ambulance Quality Indicators. This page shows how the targets are being missed, which services are fastest and slowest, and how times have moved since the crisis of 2022.
How to read this
These are NHS England Ambulance Quality Indicators. Category 1 is for life threatening emergencies, with a 7 minute mean target; Category 2 covers serious calls such as strokes and heart attacks, with an 18 minute mean target. Times are the mean across all incidents in the month. Long waits to hand patients over at hospital keep crews off the road and push response times up.
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NHS England Ambulance Quality Indicators (AmbSYS), July 2026, published 13 August 2026. Mean response times in minutes and seconds. England, by ambulance service.
The national picture
Category 2 calls take far longer than the target
In July 2026, life threatening Category 1 calls in England were reached in 8m 00s on average, just over the 7 minute target. Category 2 emergencies, the large group that includes strokes and heart attacks, took 29m 49s, against an 18 minute target, and the slowest one in ten waited 60m 39s. Times are far better than the December 2022 peak, when the Category 2 mean reached 1h 32m, but they remain well short of target and are slower than the 28m 36s of July 2025.
By ambulance service
A twofold gap between fastest and slowest
Category 2 response times vary widely between services. West Midlands Ambulance Service was fastest at 19m 38s, close to the 18 minute target, while South Western Ambulance Service was slowest at 39m 23s, more than double the target. Much of the difference comes down to how quickly each region's hospitals take patients off the ambulances.
Mean Category 2 response time by ambulance service, July 2026. The target is 18 minutes. Source: NHS England.
The bottleneck
Stuck outside the hospital
A big part of the delay is at the hospital door. In July 2026, about 24.9 per cent of handovers took more than 30 minutes, against a 15 minute standard, and the average handover took 28m 07s. Every crew waiting outside an emergency department is a crew not answering the next 999 call, which is why handover delays and slow response times move together.
Questions this raises
For emergency care
- 1.
Category 2 calls, which include strokes and heart attacks, take far longer than the 18 minute target. What is the human cost of those extra minutes?
- 2.
Response times improved sharply after the 2022 peak but have stalled short of target and are slower than a year ago. Is the recovery running out of road?
- 3.
Much of the delay is crews waiting to hand patients over at hospital. Is the ambulance problem really a hospital capacity problem?
- 4.
The fastest service is about twice as quick as the slowest. How much is genuine performance and how much is the state of the local hospitals?
Sources & method
Data provenance
- Ambulance Quality Indicators, AmbSYS (NHS England) ↗· Open Government Licence v3.0
- AmbSYS time series to July 2026 (NHS England, published 13 August 2026) ↗· Open Government Licence v3.0
- AQI Statistical Note, 13 August 2026 (NHS England) ↗· Open Government Licence v3.0
Caveats & data notes
- Times are the mean response across all incidents in the month. The mean is pulled up by a tail of very long waits, so the typical wait is shorter than the mean for Category 2.
- Response times are strongly affected by hospital handover delays, which keep crews off the road. They are not solely a measure of ambulance service performance.
- Category definitions and the targets are set nationally. Category 1 is life threatening; Category 2 is an emergency such as a stroke or heart attack.
- Figures are for England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run separate ambulance systems with different measures.
- Source: NHS England Ambulance Quality Indicators, AmbSYS, published 13 August 2026.
Every figure on this page traces to its official source. Share it as it stands.
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