Providing an emergency response

NWAS deals with more than one million emergency calls a year.  These are dealt with by emergency control centres across the North West.  Our control centres are based in Manchester, Liverpool and Preston.

Each call centre consists of a call taking suite in which the 999 calls are taken and a dispatch centre, from which the most appropriate and nearest vehicle to the incident is dispatched to the patient.  While each of the control centres will primarily take calls from those people in the surrounding areas, if the nearest control centre is inundated by 999 calls, the call will be taken by the first available operator across the region.  The vehicles, however, are always dispatched by the local dispatch centre.

The centres have a call pickup target which is set nationally and aims to answer 95% of all 999 calls within five seconds.  NWAS has one of the best pick-up rates in the country.

To find out more about calling 999 in an emergency, please visit our Calling 999 section.