East Kent Ambulance Delays Ease but NHS Targets Are Still Missed

For years, ambulance performance in East Kent was one of those local scandals that seemed to need no introduction: queues outside hospitals, handover delays, and response times that made the word “urgent” sound faintly optimistic. The latest official figures suggest the worst of that logjam has eased. But they do not show a system that is fixed. They show a system that is better than it was, while still falling short of the standards patients were supposed to be able to rely on.

The clearest improvement comes from South East Coast Ambulance Service itself. SECAMB says NHS England asked it to deliver an average Category 2 response time of 28 minutes and 19 seconds in 2025/26. It says it finished the year at 27 minutes and 46 seconds, despite taking an additional 30,000 emergency calls. That is real progress, and it is not trivial progress either. Category 2 calls include some of the emergencies residents worry about most, including suspected strokes, heart attacks and serious injuries.

Category 1 is the highest-priority group for immediately life-threatening emergencies. Category 2 covers serious emergency calls — including suspected stroke and heart attack — where a rapid response is still vital

But the small print matters. SECAMB’s own response-time page still states the long-established national standards: seven minutes on average for Category 1 calls and 18 minutes on average for Category 2 calls. The same page also says NHS England has currently adjusted the Category 2 target to a mean average of 30 minutes as part of urgent and emergency care recovery. In plain English, SECAMB beat the temporary planning ask and stayed inside the current recovery threshold, but it is still well above the original 18-minute benchmark that the public would reasonably think of as the proper standard.

The East Kent hospital side of the story looks better than it did a year ago. EKHUFT board papers show ambulance handovers within 30 minutes at 92.6 per cent in the June 2025 paper, 94.7 per cent in the July 2025 paper, 93.1 per cent in the December 2025 paper, and 94.0 per cent in the April 2026 papers reporting February performance. Taken together, those published snapshots suggest East Kent’s hospitals are no longer in the same visible state of handover dysfunction that once made ambulances feel like mobile extensions of A&E.

That does not mean the problem has vanished. Even the more encouraging February position means about 6 per cent of patients were still not handed over within 30 minutes. That is far better than the horror-show periods East Kent has known, but it is still a reminder that improvement and adequacy are not the same thing. A service can be recovering without yet being where residents would want it to be when the emergency is their own.

There is also a second warning light flashing in the background. EKHUFT’s April 2026 corridor-care improvement paper says the trust is working to eliminate corridor care in the first quarter of 2026/27. Its milestones include “maximum ambulance handover delays of no more than 45 minutes”. The same paper also notes that SECAMB is “no longer validating handover breaches in excess of 45 minutes”. That is not a sign of a calm, fully solved system. It is a sign of a service still managing pressure, still trying to reduce excessive waits, and still operating in a world where 45-minute handovers are being treated as a hard improvement line rather than an unthinkable exception.

Our older version of the ambulance story was one of collapse and backlog. The newer version is more subtle, but no less important. SECAMB’s own numbers show it has improved. EKHUFT’s board papers show hospital handovers are stronger than they were. Yet the constitutional seven-minute and 18-minute standards remain out of reach, and the continuing push to eliminate corridor care shows the system is still under strain. East Kent has moved away from outright gridlock. It has not reached anything that could honestly be called comfortable.

The Shepway Vox Team

Journalism For The People NOT The Powerful