East Midlands Ambulance Service experienced a “significant increase” in emergency calls during the first hours of 2025 – 965 of which were in the first seven hours.
600 emergency and urgent calls made to the ambulance service’s Lincoln and Nottingham emergency control centres were made between midnight and 3.30am alone, with a total of 965 in the first seven hours of 2025. The organisation is the ambulance service covering northern Lincolnshire.
999 calls were for a number of reasons including cardiac arrests, people feeling unwell due to a medical problem and following road traffic collisions. There was also a “noticeable increase” in the number of calls made to the ambulance service due to people having consumed excessive amounts of alcohol.
EMAS Head of Emergency Operations Centre, Gary Lockley, said: “As anticipated, there was a significant increase in emergency calls received during the first few hours of 2025.
“Colleagues working in our Nottingham and Lincoln based emergency control centres did a tremendous job. Calls received from across the East Midlands were answered within an average of six seconds during the first seven hours of the day.
A generic view of Diana Princess of Wales Hospital, Grimsby.
“999 calls were for a variety of reasons including cardiac arrest, people feeling acutely unwell due to a medical problem, and following road traffic collisions.
“There has been a noticeable increase in the number of calls received due to people being intoxicated having consumed excessive amounts of alcohol; in some of these cases, individuals had also fallen causing injury.”
Northern Lincolnshire & Goole NHS Foundation Trust has also taken to social media to urge people to only visit A&E if it is a “genuine emergency”, and is reminding people that hangovers and other minor ailments are not a reason to come into A&E.
EMAS Strategic Commander, Jim Richardson, said: “We had a busy start to 2025. Demand on our service and the emergency hospital departments across the East Midlands continues to be very high.
“As many welcomed in the New Year, in addition to the tremendous work of our control centre colleagues, our emergency and urgent ambulance colleagues, non-emergency patient transport teams, and volunteer responders worked incredibly hard to respond to patient need – often in the most challenging and at times hostile environments.
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“They have been supported by managers and on-call officers liaising with staff working in the busy hospitals, other healthcare facilities, and blue light services to ensure a collaborative response to the significant increase in demand.
“On behalf of our EMAS leadership team, I thank them all for their continued commitment to provide the best possible care.
“During this exceptionally busy period, and to allow us to reach people who really need our ambulances with life-saving equipment and clinicians on board, we urge people to use NHS services appropriately.
“If you’re not sure where to go, you can find services near you via the NHS.uk website, or via 111 online or by calling 111.
“Our ambulance service is for people experiencing a medical emergency. This includes cardiac arrest, chest pain, where a patient isn’t conscious or breathing, catastrophic bleeding, or suspected stroke.”