FOI 26-261 Front-line and Volunteer Staff and Incident Data
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 26-261 Front-line and Volunteer Staff and Incident Data
- Request Date
- 10 Jun 2026
- Response Date
- 02 Jul 2026
- Information Requested
Please could you advise the number of “frontline” operational ambulance personnel in your organisation at today’s date. This being the staff groups that physically attends to patients on the frontline following 999 calls. Please exclude groups such as call handlers, support staff, etc.
Could you please outline the number of voluntary responders associated with the service. Please break them down into:
Community First Responders
Community Cardiac Responders
BASICS Responders
Could you please outline the total number of ambulance calls that resulted in ambulance attendance in the most recent reporting year?
If held, please advise the number of calls in the last reporting year attended by Volunteer responders, broken down into triage category (Purple, Red, Amber, Yellow). Please advise if you are likely underreporting due to data set (I am aware that this has been the case in the past!).- Response
As at today’s date, the Scottish Ambulance Service employs approximately 3,800 frontline operational ambulance personnel. These are staff groups whose roles include physically attending patients in response to 999 calls.
While we can provide the number of frontline staff employed, we are unable to confirm how many are operational at a specific point in time. This is because staff availability fluctuates continuously due to factors such as annual leave, sickness absence, training, undertaking alternative or “light duties”, or other operational requirements. Determining a real-time operational figure would require the creation of new information through complex analysis and professional judgement.
In line with section 17(1) of FOISA, the Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold this information in a recorded format.
The Scottish Ambulance Service has voluntary responders associated with the Service as follows:
- Community First Responders: 760
- Community Cardiac Responders: 138
The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold a figure for the number of BASICS responders associated with the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS). While Community First Responders and Cardiac Responders are managed within SAS, BASICS responders is a volunteers managed by BASICS Scotland.
These volunteers support the Service by providing immediate care within their communities while an ambulance resource is enroute.
Please see the attached data sheet detailing the total number of attended emergency incidents between 01/06/2025 - 31/05/2026, broken down by call triage colour. The first tab on the data sheet details all attended incidents and the second tab details the total emergency incidents attended by Community First Responders and BASICs responders for the same time period.
The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold a dataset to report on incidents attended by community cardiac responders. It is for this reason we have applied section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2002 as information not held.
- Response Documents
