‘Motivation to make changes based on staff welfare and patient safety’

In a statement on the meal breaks trial, Mr Liversidge said: “Ambulance crews who treat patients on a daily basis typically work between eight and 12-hour shifts in often tough, mentally and physically challenging situations.

“In some cases hospital handover delays and high demand for ambulance services can see crews working over 12 hours, which makes the rest break even more important.

“The law is clear that ambulance staff need to have rest breaks, typically every six hours of work, something which all UK NHS ambulance services and staff representatives fully support.

“It is important that our employees get these breaks during their shifts to ensure they stay healthy and keep themselves nourished and hydrated so that they are able to provide a safe service to the public.

“Tired staff are more likely to make mistakes so it is especially important that those treating patients are refreshed when they arrive to treat their patient.

“Every effort is currently made to minimise the times where operational staff receive late breaks, whilst still meeting the needs of the public who dial999toaccessservices. “We will always prioritise the nearest available resource to an immediately life -threatened patient and it is important to remember that ambulancestaffwilloftenvoluntarilystoptheirbreaksinorder to get to immediately life threatened patients quickly.

“Rest break allocation will always be challenging in an emergency service and to try and overcome these challenges we have introduced a new trial policy to bring NEAS in line with all other ambulance trusts around the UK.

“During the trial, rest breaks are staggered and crews are only deployed to the most serious life-threatening calls (Red One) during the meal break period.

“This allows us to better manage break periods over a longer period resulting in more staff being available to respond to patients.

“Our motivation to make changes is entirely based on staff welfare and patient safety, not financial gain.

“We expect all staff to report any incident of patient or employee safety so that it can be fully investigated and learning identified.

“We would encourage any memberofstaffwithaconcern to raise it with their manager.

“Where a member of staff does not feel comfortable doing that, the trust’s whistleblowing policy ensures any member of staff is able to raise a concern anonymously and without fear of reprisal.”