Green roads causing delays to paramedics
Ambulances flag regular concerns about hold-ups due to LTNs and Shapps’s ‘transport revolution’
PARAMEDICS reported low traffic neighbourhoods and pop-up cycle lanes for causing delays to life-saving 999 calls every other day in London, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
In just eight months to February this year, ambulance staff logged 159 occasions when their dashes to medical emergencies were thwarted by road closures introduced as part of Grant Shapps’s “green transport revolution”.
Every 1.5 days – or twice every three days – a paramedic filed a report in the capital on a system which flags concerns the service is being compromised. And, the delays posed by so-called low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) have meant the London Ambulance Service (LAS) has now given them their own “risk register category”, one of just six high-level hazards featured in the Corporate (Trust Wide) Risk Register published in March.
The documents, obtained through Freedom of Information laws, give the clearest picture yet of how emergency services are struggling to cope with bollards and planters closing roads and cycle lanes introduced a year ago.
The risk register categorised LTNs as posing a 15 out of 25 threat. Only two risks – potential problems with the emergency telephone system and the possibility of “critical” medical equipment missing from paramedics’ kits – were rated higher at 16 out of 25.
As well as pledging to review the problem in six months, the report says Garrett Emmerson, LAS chief executive, met Sadiq Khan, the London Mayor, to discuss the problem.
The register says “there is a risk crews will be delayed attending calls, conveying patients to hospital or accessing properties due to the introduction of road closures, reduced lane capacity causing congestion, parking restrictions and other traffic calming schemes with limited/minimal consultation as a result of a pan-London response to Covid by TfL and local authorities to enhance cycling and walking schemes.”
It warns these risks “could lead to an adverse impact on patient care/patient safety” and set a target risk score of five.
The findings were “circulated to crew”, and an “Emergency Service Group” ... established and [is] meeting monthly with LAS, London Fire Brigade and Metropolitan Police Service and Transport for London head of traffic flow.” It says that from December 2020 to February this year the “risk score” remained static at 15.
An LAS spokeswoman stressed that a risk report does not mean it resulted in harm to a patient. “We support measures to improve public health but also recognise that changes to road layouts can impact on the time it takes to reach patients,” she said.
That is why we continue to engage with all local authorities across London to flag any delays, which our crews are encouraged to report,” she said.
One Lewisham, a group opposed to LTNs, obtained one risk report showing paramedics were delayed four minutes in September in reaching a “Category 1” call which was “immediately life threatening” due to road closures. A One Lewisham spokesman said: “Councillors, council officers and cycling campaigners are so desperate for these schemes to work, they are putting lives at risk for their idea of the greater good. They have dismissed concerns as ‘myths’, with flawed and biased research.”
A London Labour spokesman representing Mr Khan said “research shows that over time” LTNs contribute to traffic reduction, helping emergency services “get around London quickly and efficiently”.
The Labour spokeswoman said Mr Khan had not had any meetings with Mr Garrett to specifically discuss delays caused by LTNs.