THE big smoke is the worst place in the UK to end up during a medical emergency, figures suggest.
NHS data shows London has the fewest ambulance staff per person compared to other areas of England and Wales.
When compared to the most recent ONS population data, NHS workforce statistics for February suggest the capital has just 2,015 ambulance workers, equal to 27 per 100,000 people across the region.
For comparison, Wales, which came out the best, had 2,749, or 89 ambulance staff members per capita.
It comes as ambulance services in England are experiencing shortages following a mass exodus of staff in the past year, with nearly 7,000 leaving their jobs.
The number of emergency service crew leavers has risen sharply compared with 2019 levels, figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats in August found.
Read more on the NHS crisis
On average across the UK, emergency forces receive a 999 call every three seconds, showing an incredibly high demand for emergency services.
Fewer ambulance staff doesn’t necessarily mean emergency calls are responded to more slowly.
For example, the average wait times in London in 2022 for the most urgent ‘category one’ calls — which includes heart attack victims and those who have suffered a severe allergic shock – was seven minutes and nine seconds.
This is compared to 11 minutes and 38 seconds in the South West of England.
However, London ambulance services are slower to get to ‘category two’ calls – less critical but linked to serious conditions such as strokes and severe burns – taking on average 52 minutes and 29 seconds.
In comparison, ambulances in the West Midlands take 48 minutes and 19 seconds to answer these calls.
The data, displayed on our map, shows the East of England and the east Midlands came in as the second and third worst areas to be during a medical incident, when looking at ambulance staff numbers alone.
East England, which includes the counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk had 2,025 members of ambulance staff per population – which works out as 29 per capita.
While the east Midlands, which covers Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, and Rutland, had 1,473 ambulance workers, equal to 30 per 100,000 people.
Next came Yorkshire and Humber, North West England and North East England, which had 33, 34 and 36 ambulance workers per capita respeictively.
North West England consists of the five counties of Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Merseyside.
And North-East England includes the combined area of Northumberland, County Durham, Tyne and Wear and a small part of North Yorkshire.
People in South West England and the West Midlands have more ambulance workers than anywhere else in England.
South West England, which includes include Bath, Bristol, Bournemouth, Cheltenham, Exeter, Gloucester, Plymouth and Swindon, had 2,523 ambulance workers, meaning there were 42 per 100,000 people in it’s population.
While the West Midlands, which includes Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton had 2,750 ambulance staff, equal to 46 per capital.
In response to the London figures, chief Executive of London Ambulance Service, Daniel Elkeles, told The Sun: “While we do have relatively fewer staff per head of population than other ambulance trusts, our response times for the most serious medical emergencies are consistently among the best in the UK.
“We sustain this by having an innovative model of sending solo paramedics to our sickest patients in fast response cars, meaning our response times for these patients are generally the best or second best in the country.”