On Wednesday 2nd July 2025 East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) NHS Trust formally wrote to colleagues who work on the Fast Response Vehicles (FRV) that there would be imminent changes to the level of cover provided.

The Trust had decided not to enter into a formal consultation process, the plan was (and still is) to reduce FRV cover in EMAS by circa 50% across all divisions.

The exact location of these reductions would be left to Divisional Leadership teams to decide where they most needed this resource, for those areas who would not require an FRV response the staff affected would migrate onto a double crewed Ambulance (DCA) with no alteration to their current roster pattern with an additional DCA being created to be resourced from our current establishment.

In collaboration both trade Unions have united in their opposition to these proposed changes, highlighted what we felt were valid concerns over process, personal impact, patient safety, statistical concerns and most importantly the potential detriment to patient safety.

On Friday the 4th of July 2025 both Unions were involved in high level discussions with the trust with an overarching aim to pause this change, enter into a consultation with staff and develop any future changes based on feedback and evidence collated.

The initial implementation date for this change was planned for the 4th of August 2025, we have through dialogue reached an agreement with the Trust that no implementation will take place until such a time as colleagues have been offered 1-2-1 meetings, group discussions and a full evaluation of this process with trade union leads has taken place.

It will now be for divisional teams to arrange for this engagement to take place, to involve your trade unions in these meetings so that a comprehensive and meaningful process can now take place.

There will be no implementation of any changes until both sides are satisfied that this process has taken place in an effective manner.

We encourage all affected staff to engage, put forward their views and be part of this process.

We would like to thank EMAS for engaging with us and to remind all our union members of the right to be represented in any of the forthcoming meetings.

We have worked together on this and will continue to do so in the coming weeks; full details of the next steps will be notified by your divisions.

Kind Regards

GMB@EMAS Unison@EMAS