Recommendation SP8: Ambulance staff training exercise funding
From The Southport Inquiry Report: Phase 1, published 13 April 2026.
Recommendation
NHS England should review funding, and consider providing additional resources, to enable all emergency response ambulance staff to participate in appropriate training exercises.
In brief (written by this site)
In July 2026, HM Government stated that NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care were assessing funding for ambulance staff training alongside operational implications including funded backfill, with work to define training and exercising standards still to be carried out before providing a further detailed update (Home Office response, Jul 2026). The record holds no update since the government's response of July 2026 (Home Office response, Jul 2026).
Sources
AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 26 Sep 2026. The record below is the sources' own words.
Government response
NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) are the lead organisations, working with the Emergency Resilience Unit. Progress and next steps:
- Work will be carried out to define the required training and exercising standards for emergency response ambulance staff, including frequency, scope and staff groups,
- NHS England and DHSC are assessing funding for ambulance staff training, alongside operational implications including the requirement for funded backfill.
- Given this complexity, DHSC and NHS England will provide a further detailed update to the Inquiry in due course.
Blanket government agreement does not establish acceptance or delivery by each addressee. Some response passages cover groups of recommendations.
Scope of the government response
The government's response to Phase 1 (CP 1623, 2 July 2026) agreed with all 67 recommendations in one sentence, and names only 39 of them individually. Where a recommendation is not named, the response shown is the passage the response gives for the group it belongs to (the recommendations for organisations outside central government, or the recommendations to policing bodies), which is not a response to that recommendation alone; the response does not list the members of any group. The 10 recommendations for Phase 2 of the Inquiry to consider show no response: the response introduces them (paragraph 20) but answers none of them. The government accepts the recommendations that are for central government to deliver. Where a recommendation is for an organisation outside central government, the government's agreement is not that organisation's acceptance.
Delivery
No statement on delivery from NHS England has been found in the sources searched (last checked 2 July 2026). This is separate from the response above.
Responsible bodies
Themes and tags
Who has spoken
- NHS England
Response