FOI 26-397 South Ayrshire PTS Response Times
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 26-397 South Ayrshire PTS Response Times
- Request Date
- 02 Sep 2026
- Response Date
- 29 Sep 2026
- Information Requested
Under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, I would like to request information relating to the Scottish Ambulance Service Patient Transport Service (PTS) and/or other non-emergency ambulance transport operating in the South Ayrshire Council area.
I am specifically interested in the time taken for non-emergency patient transport requests to result in a vehicle/patient pickup.
For the most recent five complete calendar or financial years for which data is available, please provide:
1. The average (mean) time between a non-emergency patient transport journey being requested/booked and the vehicle arriving for the pickup.
2. The median time between the journey being requested/booked and the vehicle arriving for the pickup.
3. If available, please provide the same information broken down by month rather than just annually.
Please define the precise start and end points used in calculating each response/waiting-time measure, as I am particularly interested in the actual time between a transport request being made and the patient being collected.
If any part of this request is likely to exceed the cost limit, please contact me before processing that part and advise how the request could be narrowed while retaining useful information about non-emergency pickup waiting times in South Ayrshire.
I am not requesting any information that would identify individual patients.- Response
The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold PTS data in a way that allows us to report specifically on a South Ayrshire Council area variable. The figures provided have therefore been identified using journeys recorded as travelling to or from the following postcode sectors:
KA10 6; KA8 0; KA8 9; KA7 3; KA7 1; KA9 1; KA9 2; KA7 4; KA7 2; KA26 9; KA8 8; KA26 0; KA19 7; KA10 7; KA6 5; KA6 6; KA19 8; KA2 9; KA5 5; KA1 5; KA6 7; KA7 9; KA10 9.
Please find attached the information held by the Scottish Ambulance Service.
The figures cover the five financial years from 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2026 and have been extracted from the Patient Transport Service Cleric system.
Please note caution when interpreting these figures
- The figures include completed journeys only.
- They include only journeys booked on the day of travel, meaning the booking was created at or after 00:00 on the same day as the journey.
- They do not include all Patient Transport Service journeys, as PTS transport can be booked several days or weeks in advance.
- The time shown is calculated from the date and time the booking was created until the recorded date and time at which the patient was picked up.
- The information has been provided by month and includes the mean, median and 90th-percentile[i]
- The information has been provided in minutes and seconds.
As the figures are limited to journeys booked on the day of travel, they should not be interpreted as representing waiting times for all PTS journeys in the South Ayrshire area. Journeys booked in advance have been excluded because measuring the period from their original booking time to collection would primarily reflect how far in advance the journey was arranged, rather than the patient’s waiting time on the day.
[i] The time in which 90% of PTS patients were picked up.
- Response Documents
