THE number of hoax calls made to the East of England Ambulance Service Trust (EEAST) is the highest it has been in three years
The number of hoax calls made to East of England Ambulance Service Trust (EEAST) has soared by 48 per cent in the last three years, a new investigation has revealed.
Fresh figures obtained by Medical Negligence Assist have found that ambulance crews in the region have wasted hours responding to more than 660 hoax calls to the service since 2021, with figures for 2024 reaching a three-year-high.
What’s more, during that time ambulance crews made a total of 42 face-to-face responses to calls that turned out to be time-wasting hoaxes.
East of England Ambulance Service provides emergency services to people in need of urgent medical treatment and transport across Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.
In 2021, the service received 160 hoax calls, 15 of which were responded to by crews face-to-face, wasting a total of 13 hours of the service’s valuable time.
The following year, 141 calls were made, seven of which resulted in an in-person response from EEAST crews.
In 2023, a further 123 hoax calls were received by the ambulance services, 14 of which were responded to face-to-face.
This last year, 2024, the service confirmed it has had 237 hoax calls – an increase of 48 per cent compared with 2021.
Between January and December 2024, the total time spent responding to each hoax call amounted to a whopping 22 hours and 28 minutes, with an average task time of 14 minutes, according to EEAST.
