Ambulance Services
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps with NHS Ambulance Trusts to assess the potential merits of enabling humanitarian charities to purchase end-of-life ambulances directly.
Answered by Karin Smyth
NHS England does not collect or hold information centrally on numbers of decommissioned National Health Service ambulances donated or sold to humanitarian charities.
Decommissioned NHS ambulances are generally sold at auction, mainly in the United Kingdom. Selling them or donating them to humanitarian charities is a matter for individual ambulance trusts. No specific assessment has been made on the merit of enabling humanitarian charities to purchase end-of-life ambulances, nor of repurposing ambulances approaching the end of their operational lifespan; however, the Department is exploring options to continue to support humanitarian relief in Ukraine, in liaison with a range of stakeholders including ambulance services.
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