DECAMPER VAN
Company run by ambulance chiefs from same building as NHS office moves to new HQ
A camper van firm run by ambulance service managers from the same building as their NHS office has moved headquarters.
The Sunday Mail revealed how leading 999 staff were operating the £ 8000- a-month second job fromm a building which also housed the Scottish sh Ambulance Service (SAS) base where they worked – at a time when the Scottish Government had been forced to call in the Army to support paramedic crews.
Camper Van Scotland has now switched its official address from the business park at Glasgow Airport to new premises in Motherwell.
A source said: “The initial Sunday Mail story was met with disbelief by many frontline staff who had been working unbelievable hours during the pandemic to try to deliver a good service.
“There was an internal investigation and senior management were not happy – they wanted assurances camper vans were not interfering in anyone’s day job at a time when the ambulance service was under huge pressure.
“Some senior people who were involved have resigned as directors of Camper Van Scotland and the address has changed.
“It looks like there has been an effort to distance the business from the SAS.”
The address has changed from the Inospace Lightyear building at Glasgow Airport Business Park in Renfrewshire to Brandon Street in Motherwell.
Two senior managers at the SAS have terminated their positions with the firm. Billy Kinniburgh, SAS head of planning and delivery, and manager colleague Kevin Kelly were previously named on
the Companies House website as people with “significant control”.
However, paramedic John Paul Murray remains a director, along with another man called Derek Reid.
We revealed in September how up to seven key officials with the SAS were operating the business.
When we posed as a prospective customer, SAS strategic operations boss Derek Loughery – who was not on shift at the time – showed us around a £69,000 VW Grand California van in the car park of the Inospace building. Loughery is also no longer a director of the company.
When we enquired about renting a van, Kinniburgh answered the company phone and told us we could view one the next day.
At the time, an 86-year-old woman with a broken hip had been left waiting in agony for eight hours for an ambulance, while another pensioner died after a wait of almost two days.
Last week there were reports Scotland’s ambulance service is at “breaking point” as the number of emergency callers waiting more than two hours soared.
Freedom of information data, obtained by the Conservatives, revealed that 40,166 emergency callers waited more than 120 minutes for paramedics in 2021/22. That is compared with just 4438 in 2018/19.