Funding to create 40 extra ambulance crews by 2029

About 40 more ambulances will be able to respond to emergency calls in the East Midlands by 2029 after £26m of extra funding was made available to the local service.

East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) said it will be able to recruit up to 400 new patient-facing staff members between 2026 and 2029 due to the funding from the local integrated care boards.

The service said it was planning for 200 of the new workers to be in place by October 2026.

Will Legge, deputy chief executive at EMAS, said the investment will have a "real, positive impact" on patients in the area.

EMAS said the new staff members - almost 200 new workers by October 2026, and another 200 in 2027 - will be in addition to their normal recruitment process.

The latest funding, which has been supplied by the integrated care boards in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Rutland, will allow the service to create an additional 400 positions in the next three years.

Legge said: "This continued growth will help us meet the challenge of growing demand for our service and create hundreds of new career opportunities.

"We're looking forward to welcoming new passionate, caring colleagues to our EMAS team in the coming months."

The service said the new workers will support their plans to "continue improving ambulance response times across the region".

EMAS said it was making "continuous improvement to patients classed as category 2 emergencies – including those experiencing symptoms such as chest pain and stroke".

The service confirmed it lost more than 19,500 hours in handover delays in January – the worst month for the service since April 2025.

The national target is for a patient to be admitted within 15 minutes, but the average handover time increased to 41 minutes, about seven more than in the previous month.

"We've been slowly improving our response times across the East Midlands over the past three years but we want to go further than that," Legge said.

"So this is all in an effort to make sure we are responding to patients as quickly as we possibly can across the East Midlands and we're heading towards the national standards.

"We need to improve our services by having the right number of staff, the right number of vehicles and we need to have them in the right places."

Listen to BBC Radio Nottingham on Sounds and follow BBC Nottingham on Facebook, on X, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk or via WhatsApp on 0808 100 2210.