West Midlands Ambulance Service

West Midlands Ambulance Service University NHS Foundation Trust
WMAS
Area served by West Midlands Ambulance Service University NHS Foundation Trust
Type	University NHS foundation trust
Established	1 July 2006
Headquarters	Brierley Hill
Region served	West Midlands region, England
NHS region	NHS England
Area size	5,000 square miles (13,000 km2)
Population	5.6 million
Budget	£280 million (2018/19)[1]
Chair	Professor Ian Cumming
Chief executive	Professor Anthony C Marsh
Staff	5,000[2]
Website	wmas.nhs.uk
Care Quality Commission	(January 2015) CQC report

The West Midlands Ambulance Service University NHS Foundation Trust (WMAS) is responsible for providing NHS ambulance services within the West Midlands region of England. It is one of ten ambulance trusts providing England with emergency medical services, and is part of the National Health Service.

The West Midlands Ambulance Service University NHS Foundation Trust (WMAS) provides a 999 emergency medical response service for the counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, the seven boroughs of the West Midlands metropolitan county and combined authority area: Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton, and the unitary authorities of Stoke-on-Trent and Telford & Wrekin. The trust also provides non-emergency patient transport services in Birmingham, the Black Country, Arden, Cheshire and the Wirral. The contract for Worcestershire, which had been run by the ambulance service for 30 years, ended in March 2020 when it lost out to a private provider. In November 2019, the trust took over the running of the NHS 111 service in the West Midlands, except Staffordshire.

The trust is led by chief executive Professor Anthony Marsh and chair Professor Ian Cumming. It employs around 5,000 staff and is supported by a number of volunteers, including 750 community first responders. It has 15 ‘Make Ready’ ambulance hubs where emergency vehicles are prepared, maintained and cleaned by specialist staff ready for the clinical staff to use for treating patients. The trust now responds to over one million emergency calls every year.

WMAS was the highest-performing ambulance services in England and one of only two to exceed all of its national performance targets in 2018/19. It is the best-performing English ambulance service in the NHS, being graded Outstanding by Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspectors in January 2017 and 2019. It is also the UK's first university-ambulance trust.