“Meal Break Policy and Shift Rostering During the course of the Inquest the Court heard…”

The coroner’s concerns

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- 1. Meal Break Policy and Shift Rostering During the course of the Inquest the Court heard evidence as to the demand placed on NWAS during the night of the 31° October — 1% November. Difficulties in allocating resources within the Manchester area of the North West that night had been escalated to the Regional Control and Command Centre. One of the reasons for difficulties in allocating resources was directly attributed to the Meal Break Policy. In short, the issue being that each crew has to take a 30 minute meal break within their meal break window (this being three hours after their shift starts). If the crews reach the end of their meal break window without having taken a break they are automatically stood down and are unavailable to allocate calls to. The consequences of this policy have also been highlighted in other investigations following a death. In this case there was a significant reduction in the number of vehicles able to be allocated during the time Mr Oliver had contacted NWAS. The Court heard evidence this policy has been under review for sometime and consideration has been given to staggering the shift start times, but as yet no changes have been implemented 2. Turnaround times at Greater Manchester Hospitals Another contributing factor to the decreased availability of ambulances on the 31° October - 4* November 2018 was the turnaround times from hospitals in the Greater Manchester area. This was greater than anticipated at numerous sites. Whilst all hospitals were busy the turnaround times at Manchester Royal Infirmary, North Manchester General hospital, Royal Oldham, Salford Royal and Stepping Hill hospital were all particularly higher than anticipated with numerous ambulances delayed for over one hour. In total from the commencement of the night shift on the 31% October more than 273 hours of ambulance availability were spent at hospital sites handing over patients. The evidence from NWAS did not suggest this was significantly different to other nights or uncommon.

An extract. Read the full report, including the circumstances of the death, on the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary website.

Source

judiciary.uk, Prevention of Future Deaths reports, 2019-0494

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8 Oct 2026

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Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: Courts and Tribunals Judiciary, judiciary.uk. Open Government Licence v3.0