Over the weekend I published an article on these pages after a resident contacted me about a post on social media stating that an ambulance responding to a call in Park Avenue had been ‘unable’ to attend a patient’s property. The author of the post suggested that access had been blocked by a ‘parking’ incident and implied that the patient had been left unattended.
Full background details can be found here: https://robcrute-blackhall.blogspot.com/2023/01/reported-incident-at-park-avenue.html
With local residents understandably alarmed at reports on social media that an emergency vehicle had been physically prevented from reaching a patient I contacted the health scrutiny office at county hall with a request that officers from NEAS (North East Ambulance Service) carry out an investigation and then report back on what had actually happened - and also what the impact might have been in terms of patient safety if there was an access issue at Park Avenue.
I have now received a response from a senior officer at NEAS confirming that following a search of their data systems they could find no record of any reported incidents as implied in the social media post mentioned above (ie, that an ambulance was ‘unable’ to respond to a call and that a patient had been left unattended).
Furthermore NEAS say that according to their data systems there were no ‘ambulance responses' recorded for Park Avenue, nor were there any notes or reports of delays caused by access issues. I've published the response from NEAS in full below with personal details redacted:
Hi *******
I’ve had a look through our system and also had two of our dispatch managers search through our CAD, and none of us can find any case relating to this.
There are several ambulance responses in the nearby area – both emergency care and patient transport – but none for Park Avenue and neither is there any notes linked to other incidents nearby that report any delay due to bollards or access.
One of the team also ran a generic search for ‘bollards’ since 1st Jan 2023 and none came up in this area.
Kind regards
UPDATE: Following an additional query from a resident I asked the highways team to confirm which of the emergency services had said they either needed or wanted access to the public footpath running down the middle of Park Avenue.
I received a response confirming that when they were consulted none of the emergency services raised concerns about the bollards, and none of them required access.
The individual reasons given by the police, fire and ambulance services are set out in the response I received from the highways team:
Apologies for the delay in responding.
When we restricted unlawful vehicle access to the footpath at Park Avenue we consulted with all emergency services.
The police responded by saying that they did not need access to the footpath for their vehicles, the fire brigade did not request access. Given the width of a fire appliance this would not be practical. In most cases if they wanted access they would simply cut the lock off to get access.
NE Ambulance Service did not request keys for the locks nor did they have any adverse comments to make about the proposals to protect the footpath from vehicle use. I can only assume that vehicular access to the rears of the properties removes any requirement for an ambulance to drive down the footpath. An average ambulance has a body width of over 2.2m and the max width of the path is 4m and this means that the widths either side, not including street furniture or vegetation growth, is below minimum widths to safely allow pedestrians to pass.
BACKSTORY: Please follow the link here for full background details on this issue: https://robcrute-blackhall.blogspot.com/2022/11/drop-down-bollards-at-park-avenue.html
