Ambulances continue to be stuck outside hospitals – but it’s improving
Ambulances continue to be stuck outside hospitals waiting to hand over patients – with thousands of hours lost in Shropshire.
However, bosses say things are improving, with March set to have its best performance since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Using the first 15 days of the month, West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) say the amount of lost hours at Shrewsbury and Telford hospitals for March is set to be 2,734.
That is compared to 3,416 hours in March 2025, and 3,340 in March 2024.
The figures show there was a steep rise in the summer compared to last year, but the amount of lost hours went down during the winter.
| Apr | May | June | July | August | Sept | October | November | December | January | February | March | |
| 2023-24 | 2013 | 2159 | 1786 | 3159 | 2821 | 3126 | 3304 | 4250 | 3518 | 3827 | 3437 | 3340 |
| 2024-25 | 3176 | 3077 | 2499 | 2044 | 1545 | 2560 | 3453 | 4139 | 5477 | 4483 | 2921 | 3416 |
| 2025-26 | 4418 | 2511 | 2930 | 1867 | 2063 | 3628 | 3632 | 3735 | 4619 | 4467 | 3098 | 2734* |
*The March 2026 figure is based on a projection calculated using the first 15 days of the month so could go up or down.
However, an early day motion to the House of Commons – signed by North Shropshire MP Helen Morgan – says that WMAS still had its worst January ever recorded for ambulance dealys, with 50,070 hours lost waiting to hand patients over outside hospitals, the equivalent to taking 135 ambulances off the road. This includes 14,318 handovers of over an hour, with one handover taking 14 hours and 47 minutes.
“Overcrowded hospital emergency departments cause excessive handover delays and degrading corridor care,” said Mrs Morgan.
“It is simply unacceptable for someone to wait over 14 hours in the back of an ambulance, but such waits remain far too common in Shropshire.
“That is why the Liberal Democrats are calling for an urgent and emergency care plan, which includes a rapid expansion of staffed beds in hospitals and fixes our broken GP and social care settings.”
A WMAS spokesman said: “Sadly, some patients wait much longer for a response than we would want as a result of hospital handover delays. There is a direct correlation between hospital handover delays and our ability to get to patients in the community quickly.
“The West Midlands has the worst hospital handover delays in the country; they make up around a third of the entire total.
“Despite that, the statistics show that our service is performing at a very high level with the second best performance in the country this year for category two patients such as those with heart attacks and strokes.
“We will continue to work with our partners in hospitals to find new ways of reducing the handover delays so that we can get to patients in our communities even faster than we do at the moment.”
A spokesperson for The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust added: “We are taking a number of steps to reduce the time patients are waiting to receive handover from the ambulance service to our emergency departments.
“This includes increasing the flow through our hospitals by ensuring that patients are quickly assessed; redirecting to the appropriate services and we are working to improve the discharge of patients earlier in the day.
“Emergency department and acute testing, such as imaging and blood tests, are being prioritised to help with quicker clinical decisions. An additional 56 inpatient beds at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and 40 acute assessment spaces at Princess Royal Hospital are also now in use.
“We are seeing signs of improvement; in February we delivered our best average ambulance handover time since August 2025, with patients waiting on average 1 hour 11 mins.
“We know this is still far too long for our patients, but it represents progress which is a credit to the hard work of our staff. We recognise we have much more to do and are working with our system partners, including WMAS.”
