The National Guardian’s Office will be carrying out a speak-up review of NHS Ambulance Trusts in England.

We proposed this review in response to consistent findings that, despite their inspection ratings, the speaking up culture in NHS Ambulance Trusts tended to be more challenged compared to other trust types.

Our review aims to inform understanding of the speaking up culture in ambulance trusts to identify learning and make recommendations for improvement. We will work with ambulance trusts and other stakeholders to carry out this review and promote and embed the learning.

We will carry out our review between June and September 2022. We will then publish a report of our findings later in the year. Our report will make recommendations to leaders on potential areas for improvement within ambulance trusts, across all organisations supported by Freedom to Speak Up guardians, and the regulatory and supervisory regime.

Our review will consist of two main phases:

  • phase 1 – desk-based research, including analysis of publicly available and requested data and intelligence
  • phase 2 – engagement events, including focus groups (including specific sessions for minority ethnic workers) and interviews with workers, Freedom to Speak Up Guardians and senior leaders.

All NHS ambulance trusts will be included in the first phase of the review. The second phase will focus on five trusts selected to capture a cross-section of ambulance trusts. We will be using this selection criteria to determine which ambulance trusts will be selected for phase 2.

For more information about this Speak Up Review, please refer to the ambulance review terms of reference

Update 23 February 2023: The report of our findings of this Speak Up review has now been published: Speak Up Review of Ambulance Trusts