NHS Activity Tracker: September 2025
Ambulance sector
7m 47s
category 1 average response time in August
775,330
ambulance incidents recorded in August
27m 3s
category 2 average response time in August
Incidents (August 2025)
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There were 775,330 incidents in August 2025, up by 6.1% since last year.
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In August, there were 74,580 category 1 incidents (life-threatening injuries and illnesses), a fall of 6.4% on last month but 1.3% higher compared to the same period last year.
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Category 2 incidents totalled 385,920, a 1.9% decrease from the previous month but up by 4.2% compared to last year.
Response times and handovers (August 2025)
The national ambulance response time targets are seven minutes for category 1 incidents and 18 minutes for category 2 incidents. As part of the plan to recover urgent and emergency care, NHS England adjusted the category 2 target to 30 minutes, on a temporary basis.
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The average response time across England for category 1 incidents was seven minutes and 47 seconds, the quickest in the last four years except for April 2025, but missing the national standard of seven minutes.
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For category 2 incidents, the average response time was 27 minutes and three seconds – the fastest since May 2021 and meeting the 30-minute recovery target for the sixth month in a row.
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In August 2025, there were a total of 407,250 ambulance handovers where the handover time is known. The mean handover time was 25 minutes 56 seconds, the second fastest time recorded since the series started in October 2023. 21.6% of handovers were over 30 minutes this month, falling for the seventh consecutive month from the peak of 36.7% in December 2024.
Figure three
Ambulance response times for category 2 incident.
