Health Letter to London Ambulance Service

The London Ambulance Service’s five-year strategy should include targets and an action plan for how it will improve workforce diversity to better represent the city it serves, with only one in five of its current workforce from a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic background.

The London Assembly Health Committee has written to the London Ambulance Service (LAS) with 5 recommendations for its new organisational strategy for 2023-28, following a discussion with representatives and a call to patient groups and members of the public for written evidence.

The recommendations include urging that the LAS 2023-28 strategy includes an action plan for how it will improve workforce diversity, in particular for paramedics.

LAS accepts that this is an area in which it wants to improve, telling the Committee that “an only 20 per cent diverse workforce… in a city where 50 per cent of people are not white British, that feels totally wrong”.

Representatives suggested to the Committee that the workforce will become more ethnically representative of London by increasing take-up of different routes into paramedicine, such as the entry-level ambulance practitioner programme, and by training and upskilling its call-handlers.

Other recommendations include:

• The LAS should include in its new strategy commitments to increase levels of patient engagement, in order to give patients a greater say in how services are delivered.
• The LAS should include in its new strategy specific commitments and targets around public awareness and education initiatives. These should relate to issues such as when the public should call 999, how they should do so, and actions they can take to prevent emergency care being required in the first place.
• The LAS strategy should include commitments and targets to increase its outreach work in schools and colleges, in order to encourage more people into the profession.