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SP8

Ambulance staff training exercise funding

Southport Inquiry · The Southport Inquiry Report: Phase 1 · Issued 13 April 2026 · Addressed to: NHS England

Government responseNHS England: Accepted (Jul 2026)

DeliveryNo statement from NHS England found

Recommendation, verbatim from the inquiry

●Inquiry recommendation

NHS England should review funding, and consider providing additional resources, to enable all emergency response ambulance staff to participate in appropriate training exercises.

Southport Inquiry, The Southport Inquiry Report: Phase 1 · 13 Apr 2026 Source PDF →

Published evidence summary

AI-generated evidence summary

In July 2026, HM Government stated that NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care were assessing funding for ambulance staff training alongside operational implications including funded backfill, with work to define training and exercising standards still to be carried out before providing a further detailed update (Home Office response, Jul 2026). The record holds no update since the government's response of July 2026 (Home Office response, Jul 2026).

Sources

AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 26 Sep 2026.

Report-level response context

The government's response to Phase 1 (CP 1623, 2 July 2026) agreed with all 67 recommendations in one sentence, and names only 39 of them individually. Where a recommendation is not named, the response shown is the passage the response gives for the group it belongs to (the recommendations for organisations outside central government, or the recommendations to policing bodies), which is not a response to that recommendation alone; the response does not list the members of any group. The 10 recommendations for Phase 2 of the Inquiry to consider show no response: the response introduces them (paragraph 20) but answers none of them. The government accepts the recommendations that are for central government to deliver. Where a recommendation is for an organisation outside central government, the government's agreement is not that organisation's acceptance.

Government response

●NHS England · Accepted · 2 Jul 2026

Words of: HM Government, Government Response to Phase 1 of the Southport Inquiry (CP 1623), presented to Parliament by the Home Secretary, 2 July 2026

NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) are the lead organisations, working with the Emergency Resilience Unit. Progress and next steps:
- Work will be carried out to define the required training and exercising standards for emergency response ambulance staff, including frequency, scope and staff groups,
- NHS England and DHSC are assessing funding for ambulance staff training, alongside operational implications including the requirement for funded backfill.
- Given this complexity, DHSC and NHS England will provide a further detailed update to the Inquiry in due course.

Extract from: Government Response to Phase 1 of the Southport Inquiry

Delivery

No statement on delivery from NHS England has been found in the sources searched. This is separate from the response above.

How this page is built

The recommendation and the government responses are verbatim from primary documents. Delivery statements and other bodies' findings are shown in their own words, each with its source. The summary is written by this site and labelled as such. The Index does not paraphrase sources or characterise intent; it records what has been published.