Adam Nichols
Unit1-Government, policies and the public services
Richard Bailey
Impact of government policies on the different public services
999 response times
An article written by Matt Gravelling on August 23rd 2018, The longest delays in the UK were
recorded by the welsh ambulance service which kept four patients waiting for up to 62
hours. Historically ambulance services are allowed up to 60 seconds from receiving a call to
sending a vehicle. They told us this isn’t long enough. Call handlers have said they need
more time to access a 999 call and determine whether it's life threatening or not and send
the most appropriate response.
In 2015, UK ambulance services received
8,892,346 calls, which rose to 9,891,559 in 2016
and 10,242,507 in 2017
£36 million of funding recently announced will
boost paramedic crews and improve the quality
of NHS ambulance fleets.
These delays have pinned the blame on the
coper-forma transport. A patient transport service which lost its multimillion-pound contract
over delays in taking people to and from hospitals in Sussex is to be dissolved. Coper-forma,
which admitted it had "badly let down" patients, is the subject of a compulsory strike-off
notice reported at Companies House.
In my opinion the main issue is the affect it has on the paramedic as they are the ones who
are under the pressure of trying to keep up with the amount of patients they have to attend
to by ambulance with such limited time and not as many resources as they would like to
have, and due to this other than the patients they are also affected by these issues.
A news article says, doctors revealed they have had patients “die waiting” and had critically
ill new born put at serious risk, the British Medical Association has said NHS bosses must
address long waits. This is proof of my statement that people panic and worry for the ill
health of other's while waiting for an ambulance due to unacceptable waiting time through
999 emergency calls.
A negative impact of these issues is that people will become more scared for their lives if
they get themselves into a situation when they become injured and an ambulance is
required, knowing that they could be waiting for quite some time, can cause fear, panic and
worry.
However, a positive impact on this is that with the new funding they are going to receive, it
should help improve response times through being able to employ more paramedics and
buy new vehicles and equipment and people would have less fear to phone up 999 for an
ambulance.
, Adam Nichols
Unit1-Government, policies and the public services
Richard Bailey
Police funding
since 2010, central government funding to the police forces has been cut by almost a third,
in real figures this means that the number of leading officers has fallen by 21,000.
some of the police and crime commissioners who represent the public say that the stretched
service is struggling to cope due to lack of funding.
According to an article by Danny Shaw from the
BBC news, it is said that Police forces in England
and Wales are set to receive an extra £300m to
help pay for pension expenses and other costs,
ministers have announced.
In my opinion this new set budget the public
service is going to receive would help substantially, it would help to employ new officers into
the force, as well as buy new equipment. This action should most definitely take place as it
would benefit society and help to reduce crime and make more people within society feel
safe just as they should
Police Minister Nick Hurd accepted that, as it came at a "time of real pressure".
He added that forces needed "additional support to help them do their job" and said officers
were "bearing down on the worst spike in serious violence and knife crime that we have
seen in a decade
what he has said is correct as knife crime has had a substantial increase from 2010 to 2018
as figures show that in 2010 there were 13,332 recorded reports of knife crime whereas in
2018 the figure showed 14,769 recorded results of knife crime, that's 1437 difference.
Not to mention the number of times the figures dropped and risen between 2011 to 2017.
the amount of knife crime that has increased is the result of the police not having enough
funding to deal with it and this has come at a cost of society being scared and families
loosing someone.
One way in which society is affected by police funding is through the lack of fast responding
officers. Due to budget cuts in the last decade officers have fallen and the crime rate has
risen, meaning that there aren't enough officers to cover the amount of crime that is
ongoing, this has led to some crimes being dealt with over the phone.
A positive impact of this is that if police get more funding, there is more chance of crime to
reduce as they would have the money to spend on resources and the employment of more
officers which can make this happen.
Overall the major negative impact is the police receiving a cutback on their funding as it will
be quite substantial and could change their effectiveness, this is due to the main fact of
which there will be less money to pay the officers who serve and protect, there will be less
money to buy them equipment and eventually there will not be any officers at all, this is
when it would have an immediate effect on the communities they serve as there will be no
law enforced officers to stop crime that could potentially spring out. This can and will affect
some of the other public services such as ambulance and fire and rescue as if there are no
police officers more people will become injured which will increase demand and effect the
NHS and ambulance service as well as riots can form and fires can be made which can put
more pressure on the fire and rescue service.