For what it's worth

Once you've dialled 999 for an ambulance in a rural area, you find a new interest in where the vehicle is based and how long it will take to reach you.

From September to December 2012, there is an East Midlands consultation on plans to close local ambulance stations in small towns, and to have staff start and end shifts at Hub buildings in large towns and cities: in the Peak District, that presumably means that staff who are currently based in Ashbourne would be based in Derby, and staff based in Buxton or Bakewell would be based in Chesterfield.

The consultation explains the benefit in service to users, but it skates over the impact on staff, and on rural employment.

For what it is worth, this is my response to their consultation:

I am pleased to hear that when I call 999, the ambulance sent to me will be starting from a location which has been chosen for speed of response and network resilience rather than because you happen to have a building there.

BUT you don't explain the impact on staff. The plan appears to involve many staff driving a LOT further at the start and end of their shifts. Even if you have transition arrangements in place, I bet that means that within a few years, existing staff will be driving in their own time, at their own cost, to reach your more centralised bases. That is not fair on people who took a lifetime-career job based on the then-current expectation of where their shifts would start and end.

And in time, this will mean a migration of ambulance service jobs from rural areas to the urban areas where you have your Hubs.  Driving 45 minutes from home to a Hub at one's own expense and time is unattractive enough, but if one then picks up a vehicle and drives back to a Standby point much nearer to home, it will seem even more painful. As planned, staff distant from your Hubs will find the job much less attractive than those who live nearby. And the rural areas of the UK have little enough employment already.

Couldn't you have been more imaginative about where staff start and end shifts? Sure, it is much neater to have everyone troop in to a Hub each day, but it's not good for staff or the country. Set a requirement that each vehicle comes back to the Hub every 12 hours (say) and choose which vehicle goes to which call to make this possible. At that point, the staff swap with a fully-serviced vehicle and go off again. Then you can have your staff start and end shifts at Community Ambulance Posts or even at Standby posts, reducing commuting mileage and maintaining the geographic diversity of your workforce.