Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic or Scots Gaelic, sometimes referred to as Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. A member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic, like Modern Irish and Manx, developed out of Middle Irish. Most of modern Scotland was once Gaelic-speaking, as evidenced by Gaelic-language placenames. In the 2011 census of Scotland, 57,375 people reported as able to speak Gaelic, 1,275 fewer than in 2001; the highest percentages of Gaelic speakers were in the Outer Hebrides. There are revival efforts, the number of speakers of the language under age 20 did not decrease between the 2001 and 2011 censuses. Outside Scotland, Canadian Gaelic is spoken in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Scottish Gaelic is not an official language of either the United Kingdom. However, it is classed as an indigenous language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, which the British government has ratified, the Gaelic Language Act 2005 established a language development body, Bòrd na Gàidhlig.
Aside from "Scottish Gaelic", the language may be referred to as "Gaelic", pronounced or in English. "Gaelic" may refer to the Irish language. Scottish Gaelic is distinct from Scots, the Middle English-derived language varieties which had come to be spoken in most of the Lowlands of Scotland by the early modern era. Prior to the 15th century, these dialects were known as Inglis by its own speakers, with Gaelic being called Scottis. From the late 15th century, however, it became common for such speakers to refer to Scottish Gaelic as Erse and the Lowland vernacular as Scottis. Today, Scottish Gaelic is recognised as a separate language from Irish, so the word Erse in reference to Scottish Gaelic is no longer used. Gaelic was believed to have been brought to Scotland, in the 4th–5th centuries CE, by settlers from Ireland who founded the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata on Scotland's west coast in present-day Argyll.:551:66 However, archaeologist Dr Ewan Campbell has argued that there is no archaeological or placename evidence of a migration or takeover.
This view of the medieval accounts is shared by other historians. Regardless of how it came to be spoken in the region, Gaelic in Scotland was confined to Dál Riata until the eighth century, when it began expanding into Pictish areas north of the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde. By 900, Pictish appears to have become extinct replaced by Gaelic.:238–244 An exception might be made for the Northern Isles, where Pictish was more supplanted by Norse rather than by Gaelic. During the reign of Caustantín mac Áeda, outsiders began to refer to the region as the kingdom of Alba rather than as the kingdom of the Picts. However, though the Pictish language did not disappear a process of Gaelicisation was under way during the reigns of Caustantín and his successors. By a certain point during the 11th century, all the inhabitants of Alba had become Gaelicised Scots, Pictish identity was forgotten. In 1018, after the conquest of the Lothians by the Kingdom of Scotland, Gaelic reached its social, cultural and geographic zenith.:16–18 Colloquial speech in Scotland had been developing independently of that in Ireland since the eighth century.
For the first time, the entire region of modern-day Scotland was called Scotia in Latin, Gaelic was the lingua Scotica.:276:554 In southern Scotland, Gaelic was strong in Galloway, adjoining areas to the north and west, West Lothian, parts of western Midlothian. It was spoken to a lesser degree in north Ayrshire, the Clyde Valley and eastern Dumfriesshire. In south-eastern Scotland, there is no evidence that Gaelic was widely spoken. Many historians mark the reign of King Malcom Canmore as the beginning of Gaelic's eclipse in Scotland, his wife Margaret of Wessex spoke no Gaelic, gave her children Anglo-Saxon rather than Gaelic names, brought many English bishops and monastics to Scotland.:19 When Malcolm and Margaret died in 1093, the Gaelic aristocracy rejected their anglicised sons and instead backed Malcolm's brother Donald Bàn. Donald had spent 17 years in Gaelic Ireland and his power base was in the Gaelic west of Scotland, he was the last Scottish monarch to be buried on Iona, the traditional burial place of the Gaelic Kings of Dàl Riada and the Kingdom of Alba.
However, during the reigns of Malcolm Canmore's sons, Alexander I and David I, Anglo-Norman names and practices spread throughout Scotland south of the Forth–Clyde line and along the northeastern coastal plain as far north as Moray. Norman French displaced Gaelic at court; the establishment of royal burghs throughout the same area under David I, attracted large numbers of foreigners speaking Old English. This was the beginning of Gaelic's status as a predominantly rural language in Scotland.:19-23 Clan chiefs in the northern and western parts of Scotland continued to support Gaelic bards who remained a central feature of court life there. The semi-independent Lordship of the Isles in the Hebrides and western coastal mainland remained Gaelic since the language's recovery there in the 12th century, providing a political foundation for cultural prestige down to the end of the 15th century.:553-6By the mid-14th century what came to be called Scots emerged as the official language of government and law.:139 Scotland's emergent nat
A82 road
The A82 is a major road in Scotland that runs from Glasgow to Inverness via Fort William. It is a trunk road managed by Transport Scotland, who view it as an important link from the Central Belt to the Scottish Highlands and beyond; the road passes close to numerous landmarks in the Highlands, including Loch Lomond, Rannoch Moor, Glen Coe, the Ballachulish Bridge, Ben Nevis, the Commando Memorial, Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle. The route is derived in several places from the military roads constructed through the Highlands by General George Wade and Major William Caulfeild in the 18th century, along with roads constructed by Thomas Telford in the 19th; the modern route is based on that designed by Telford, but with a number of improvements dating from the 1920s and 30s. These include a diversion across Rannoch Moor and another around Loch Leven, subsequently replaced by the Ballachulish Bridge. Several travel guides have praised individual parts of the road, such as the section from Tyndrum to Glencoe across Rannoch Moor, as providing memorable driving experiences.
Tourists find the A82 a popular route because of its scenery, it serves as a main artery for commercial and heavy goods traffic. Transport Scotland have publicly declared a commitment to improve congestion and safety along the road. Parts of the A82 are closed for maintenance, which has resulted in strong protest from the local community, the road has been criticised for its poor accident record. At 167 miles, the A82 is the second longest A-road in Scotland, after the A9, has been described as the "slower but more scenic route" of the two. Initial sections of the road were built by General George Wade from 1724 onwards, though much of the current route was constructed by Thomas Telford in the 19th century; the A82 was one of the first trunk roads, which were created in 1936, has been described in official government documentation as part of the "London – Carlisle – Glasgow – Inverness Trunk Road" in which the A6 and A74 made up the rest of the route. On 1 April 1996, the section from Glasgow to the Dalnottar Interchange with the A898 was detrunked.
The main length of the A82, as managed by Transport Scotland, is now described in statutory instruments and orders as the "Dalnottar – Inverness Trunk Road". From Glasgow to Dalnottar, the route is now the responsibility of Glasgow City Council and West Dunbartonshire Council in their respective areas; the A82 runs through some of the Gaelic-speaking areas in Scotland, known as the Gàidhealtachd. In 2003, the Scottish Government announced that it would install bilingual signs on a number of trunk roads, including the A82 from Tarbet to Inverness. Transport Minister Lewis Macdonald hoped that the signs would improve the tourism experience in the Highlands, as well as improve awareness of Scottish Gaelic; the A82 begins in the St George's Cross area of central Glasgow, at a junction with the M8 and the A804. From here, it heads in a northwest direction along the Great Western Road for 3 miles towards Anniesland Cross and passes a number of the city's terraces, including Alexander "Greek" Thomson's Great Western Terrace, constructed in 1867, Devonshire Terrace before widening to dual carriageway at Kelvinside.
The road here was built as a turnpike road in 1816 and widened to its current state in the early 1970s. All the trees along the route were preserved owing to environmental concerns; the Great Western Road has been described by Tam Galbraith as "the most noble entry to any city in Europe."The road continues beyond Anniesland Cross as an extension of the Great Western Road, constructed between 1922 and 1924, making it easier to widen to dual carriageway in the 1970s than the earlier 19th century section. It approaches a freeflow junction with the A898 from Erskine Bridge and becomes a high quality dual carriageway route through Dumbarton before running to the west of Alexandria and Bonhill on a bypass constructed in the late 1960s; this dual carriageway ends at the Balloch Roundabout near the western shore of Loch Lomond, where the road enters the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park. The A82 follows the Luss Road along the western shores of the loch, through Arden to Luss. Toward Crianlarich, it follows the general route of the Old Military Road that runs along the shoreline in several places, but it keeps some distance to the west.
Much of this section of the road was widened to a high quality single carriageway standard over the 1980s, at an estimated cost of £24 million, while Luss itself is now bypassed to the west of the village along a single carriageway bypass constructed between 1990 and 1992. At Tarbet, the A83 branches west to Campbeltown while the A82 continues to the north end of the loch; this part of the road is of a lower standard than the sections further south. It is sandwiched between the shoreline of the loch and the mountains to the west, it runs alongside the West Highland Line; the road narrows to less than 7.3 metres in places and causes significant problems for heavy goods vehicles, which have to negotiate tight bends and the narrow carriageway width. At Pulpit rock, the road was single-track, with traffic flow controlled by traffic lights for over 30 years; the road was widened in 2015 as part of a £9 million improvement programme, including a new viaduct bringing the carriageway width to modern standards.
The north end of the loch is at Ardlui, after which the A82 continues to follow the Highland Line along Glen Falloch, a typical glacial valley, towards Crianlarich. The road runs to the west of Crianlarich village itself on a 0.81-mile bypass completed in 2015. The A82 and A85 share the same route for 5 miles between Crianlarich and
Rough Castle Fort
Rough Castle Fort is a Roman fort on the Antonine Wall 2 kilometres south east of Bonnybridge near Tamfourhill in the Falkirk council area, Scotland. It is owned by the National Trust for Scotland; the Antonine Wall dates from about 143 AD. The ends of the wall were uncertain for many years. In the east Carriden near Bo'ness on the Forth was a endpoint. In the west is Old Kilpatrick on the Clyde, although there were forts beyond that at Bishopton and Barochan Hill; the fort is one of the best-preserved of the forts constructed along the Wall. Built against the southern rear face of the Wall, the fort was defended by 6 metre thick turf ramparts and surrounded by defensive ditches. Gateways were provided through the main Wall to the north, through the walls on the other three sides of the fort. Causeways were constructed across the main Antonine and secondary defensive ditches, affording easy access to and from the fort; the fort had an area of about 4,000 square metres. The fort contained several buildings, made of stone from a time when this was a less common construction material.
The traces of the commander's house, the barracks, the headquarters, the bath house and a granary have been discovered. Although the original buildings have not survived, these buildings' foundations were discovered during excavations in 1902-03, 1932 and 1957-61. A video reconstruction of the site has been produced. Inscriptions found on recovered artifacts indicate that the fort based 480 men of the Cohors VI Nerviorum of Nervii, foot soldiers drawn from a north-eastern Gallic tribe; the military road on the south side of the Wall, which enabled transport between all forts, is still well defined and there is a fine length of rampart and ditch still intact to the west. An altar to Victory was found in 1843 to the south of the fort. Other finds include some glass from a window and leather shoes. A feature of the defences at the fort, discovered during the excavations, is a series of pits lying to the north west of the causeway across the Antonine ditch; these pits, known as lilia, would have contained sharpened stakes at the bottom.
The lilia were positioned to help defend the vulnerable northern gateway through the Wall. Near the fort were a turf platform and gravel pits for building of the military road. Interestingly the bath house was built on an annexe; the fort was defended by Nervii and Flavius Betto was a commanding officer. One of the best overviews of the site is the video of the Bridgeness Slab by Falkirk Council, presented by Geoff Bailey, Keeper of Archeology and Local History at Falkirk Museum, from about 10 minutes. For early discoveries see Sir George Macdonald's writings. A sound and light show has been organised at Rough Castle in November 2018 to promote tourism. List of places in Falkirk district Media related to Rough Castle at Wikimedia Commons Antonine Wall: Rough Castle at Historic Envirnment Scotland website Rough Castle Fort on the Gazetteer for Scotland Falkirk Local History Society
Castlecary
Castlecary is a small, village in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. It has long been associated with infrastructure, being adjacent to a bridged river, a Roman fort and roads, a nationwide canal, a Victorian railway viaduct, a modern motorway. Castlecary is close to the town of Cumbernauld but like Dullatur and Luggiebank is not part of the town. Around 1725, the barony of Castlecary, with a population of just seventeen families, was disjoined from the parish of Falkirk, annexed to Cumbernauld quoad sacra. Castlecary is near Allandale which, though in the Falkirk council area, was built for Castlecary fireclay workers. Castlecary, like many other settlements in the area, is steeped in the Roman history of Scotland; the route of the Antonine Wall passes through to the village. Around 80 AD, a Roman camp was built at Castlecary, it may have been during governor Agricola's fourth campaign season. Most Roman forts along the wall held garrisons of around 500 men. Larger forts like Castlecary and Birrens had a nominal cohort of 1000 men but sheltered women and children as well although the troops were not allowed to marry.
There is too to have been large communities of civilians around the site. In 1769, workmen seeking materials for the Forth and Clyde Canal, found 8 apartments along with the remains of an L-shaped, bathhouse in the south-east section of the fort. Inside the walls other objects such as human bones, pottery shards and boars' tusks were discovered; the site was not handled with much respect to archaeology as gunpowder was used at the fort to improve land for agriculture. It was, excavated sympathetically in 1902. Artefacts, found at Castlecary, such as the altar to the Roman god Fortuna can now be viewed at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow. Eleven inscribed stoneworks have been recovered from the Castlecary fort. Nine of these were altars. A sandstone statuette of Fortuna, the Roman god of luck, fortune was found at Castlecary in 1771. Fortuna is depicted on around 1000 different Roman coins and looking at them leaves little doubt that it's Fortuna and not Mercury, depicted. A Roman altar to Mercury by the Sixth Legion was found at Castlecary.
George MacDonald calls in no. 36 in the 2nd edition of his book The Roman Wall in Scotland. It's a small altar, he regarded it as notable for showing that Britons were comrades in the Roman army. An altar to an unknown goddess was found while digging the canal, it is hard to read anything more than four letters. A few coins and the remains of a Roman tuba were recovered and well as a pair of small shoes suggesting there were children onsite; the National Scottish Museums list a cornu mouthpiece, a glass cup fragment, an iron claw hammer, a wooden spatula and two sculpted stone. One stone identifies the'sixth cohort, the century of Antonius Aratus'. In the 21st century a treasure trove of a lion's head was discovered at Castlecary; the site in relation to the Red Burn, the Forth and Clyde Canal, the road, the former railway station can be seen on older maps. The canal crosses the Red Burn on an aqueduct, close to the Bonny Water just outside Castlecary. Just west of Castlecary, at Garnhall, two Roman temporary camps were discovered.
A round enclosure and a possible watchtower were found although these are not visible today. At Tollpark, remains one of the longest continuous stretches of the Wall, it is found between the forts at Westerwood. A kissing gate behind the hotel provides access to this section of the wall; some antiquarians posited that Castlecary was Ptolemy's Coria Damniorum although such assertions lack evidence. The Damnonii or Damnii themselves are only mentioned by Ptolemy. There were two fireclay brickworks in Castlecary: Castlecary Fireclay Company Limited, known as Weir’s Castlecary, established during the late 19th century by Alexander Weir, which closed in 1968; the two companies were over the road from each other. Stein's brickworks in Allandale provided local employment for many years; the site is now derelict and awaiting redevelopment. Allandale village was built for the Castlecary brickworkers and John Stein's business grew to be the 2nd largest fireclay brick manufacturer in the world; some early footage of the 1932 Castlecary gala day survives shot by the Stein family.
Other 19th century employers include a sawmill. One suggested use of the former brickworks has been the construction of a new "park and ride" railway station, to be called Allandale, it had been suggested that the station be called Castlecary, but representations were made to the scheme's sponsors not to call it this given the existence of a Castle Cary station in Somerset and the potential for confusion between the two. A Castlecary railway station existed but it closed in 1967, it was the site of a major accident, the Castlecary Rail Disaster on 10 December 1937, when two trains collided with one another. The accident cost the lives of 35 people, with a further 179 injured. A memorial was installed in the memorial garden in the village on 30th August 2008; the Castlecary Rail Crash of 9 September 1968 is commemorated there. There is little beyond housing in the village today; the Castlecary House Hotel is a well-known business in the village and was up for sale in 2016. The hotel is in a central location, sited to south of the canal.
The fort and the castle are east of the M80. A major employer in the area is CMS Windows which
Cadder
Cadder is a district of the town of Bishopbriggs, East Dunbartonshire, Scotland. It is located 7 km north of Glasgow city centre, 0.5 km south of the River Kelvin, 1.5 km north-east of Bishopbriggs town centre, sited on the route of the Forth and Clyde Canal. There is a Glasgow council housing scheme of a similar name pronounced Cawder, in the district of Lambhill some 3 miles to the south-west along the Canal, built in the early 1950s. Within Cadder, there is Cawder Golf Club, which uses that original pronunciation. In antiquity, Cadder was the site of a Roman fort on the route of the Antonine Wall, its neighbouring forts are Balmuildy to the west and Kirkintilloch to the east although there are intermediate fortlets at Wilderness Plantation to the west and Glasgow Bridge to the east. The Second Legion may have been responsible for building the fort. John Clarke of the Glasgow Archaeological Society excavated the remains in the 1930s. Sir George Macdonald wrote about the excavation of the site.
The site was destroyed by sand quarrying in the 1940s. A sketch of the medieval motte made by Skinner still survives. One find at Cadder was an oil lamp, associated with the bath house of the fort. Before the Reformation the lands of Cadder and the kirk belonged to the Bishops of Glasgow. In the 18th century James Dunlop of Garnkirk being a wealthy landowner opposed Thomas Muir and the congregation at Cadder over who appointed their minister. Cadder Parish Church was described in the 19th century as a neat modern Gothic church. Cadder House was a property held by the Stirling family for generations. Cadder has a large cemetery, is the site of Strathkelvin Retail Park and Low Moss
Antonine Wall
The Antonine Wall, known to the Romans as Vallum Antonini, was a turf fortification on stone foundations, built by the Romans across what is now the Central Belt of Scotland, between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde. Representing the northernmost frontier barrier of the Roman Empire, it spanned 63 kilometres and was about 3 metres high and 5 metres wide. Lidar scans have been carried out to establish the length of the wall and the Roman distance units used. Security was bolstered by a deep ditch on the northern side, it is thought. The barrier was the second of two "great walls" created by the Romans in what the English once called Northern Britain, its ruins are less evident than the better-known Hadrian's Wall to the south because the turf and wood wall has weathered away, unlike its stone-built southern predecessor. Construction began in AD 142 at the order of Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius, took about 12 years to complete. Antoninus Pius never visited Britain. Pressure from the Caledonians may have led Antoninus to send the empire's troops further north.
The Antonine Wall was protected by 16 forts with small fortlets between them. The soldiers who built the wall commemorated the construction and their struggles with the Caledonians in decorative slabs, twenty of which survive; the wall was abandoned only eight years after completion, the garrisons relocated back to Hadrian's Wall. In 208 Emperor Septimius ordered repairs; the occupation ended a few years and the wall was never fortified again. Most of the wall and its associated fortifications have been destroyed over time, but some remains are visible. Many of these have come under the care of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee. Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius ordered the construction of the Antonine Wall around 142. Quintus Lollius Urbicus, governor of Roman Britain at the time supervised the effort, which took about twelve years to complete; the wall stretches 63 kilometres from Old Kilpatrick in West Dunbartonshire on the Firth of Clyde to Carriden near Bo'ness on the Firth of Forth. The wall was intended to extend Roman territory and dominance by replacing Hadrian's Wall 160 kilometres to the south, as the frontier of Britannia.
But while the Romans did establish many forts and temporary camps further north of the Antonine Wall in order to protect their routes to the north of Scotland, they did not conquer the Caledonians, the Antonine Wall suffered many attacks. The Romans called the land north of the wall Caledonia, though in some contexts the term may refer to the whole area north of Hadrian's Wall; the Antonine Wall was shorter than Hadrian's Wall and built of turf on a stone foundation, but it was still an impressive achievement. It was a simpler fortification than Hadrian's Wall insofar as it did not have a subsidiary ditch system behind it to the south, as Hadrian's Wall did with its Vallum; the stone foundations and wing walls of the original forts on the Antonine Wall demonstrate that the original plan was to build a stone wall similar to Hadrian's Wall, but this was amended. As built, the wall was a bank, about four metres high, made of layered turves and earth with a wide ditch on the north side, a military way on the south.
The Romans planned to build forts every 10 kilometres, but this was soon revised to every 3.3 kilometres, resulting in a total of nineteen forts along the wall. The best preserved but one of the smallest forts is Rough Castle Fort. In addition to the forts, there are at least 9 smaller fortlets likely on Roman mile spacings, which formed part of the original scheme, some of which were replaced by forts; the most visible fortlet is Kinneil, at the eastern end of the Wall, near Bo'ness. There was once a remarkable Roman structure within sight of the Antonine Wall at Stenhousemuir; this was Arthur's O'on, a circular stone domed monument or rotunda, which may have been a temple, or a tropaeum, a victory monument. It was demolished for its stone in 1743. In addition to the line of the Wall itself there are a number of coastal forts both in the East and West, which should be considered as outposts and/or supply bases to the Wall itself. In addition a number of forts farther north were brought back into service in the Gask Ridge area, including Ardoch, Strageath and Dalginross and Cargill.
Recent research by Glasgow University has shown that the distance stones, stone sculptures unique to the Antonine Wall which were embedded in the wall to mark the lengths built by each legion, were brightly painted unlike their present bare appearance. These stones are preserved in the University's museum and are said to be the best-preserved examples of statuary from any Roman frontier. Several of the slabs have been analysed by various techniques including portable X-ray fluorescence. Tiny remnants of paint have been detected by surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. Several of the distance slabs have been scanned and 3-D videos produced. There are plans to reproduce the slabs, both digitally and in real physical copies, with their authentic colours. A copy of the Bridgeness Slab has been made and can be found in Bo'ness, it is expected that lottery funding will allow replicas of distance markers to be placed along the length of the wall. The wall was abandoned onl
Scottish Ambulance Service
The Scottish Ambulance Service is the NHS Ambulance Services Trust, part of NHS Scotland, which serves all of Scotland's population. Uniquely, the Scottish Ambulance Service is considered a special health board and is funded directly by the Health and Social Care Directorates of the Scottish Government, it is the sole public emergency medical service covering Scotland's mainland and islands. In 1948, the newly formed National Health Service contracted two voluntary organisations, the St Andrew's Ambulance Association and the British Red Cross, to jointly provide a national ambulance provision for Scotland, known as the St Andrew's and Red Cross Scottish Ambulance Service; the British Red Cross withdrew from the service in 1967. In 1974, with the reorganisation of the National Health Service, ambulance provision in Scotland was taken over by the NHS, with the organisational title being shortened to the now-current Scottish Ambulance Service. St. Andrew's First Aid, the trading name of St. Andrew's Ambulance Association, continues as a voluntary organisation and provides first aid training and provision in a private capacity.
The Scottish Ambulance Service now continues in its current form as one of the largest emergency medical providers in the UK, employing more than 4,000 staff in a variety of roles and responding to 740,631 emergency incidents in 2015/2016 alone. The service, like the rest of the National Health Service is free at point of access and is utilised by the public and healthcare professionals alike. Employing 1,300 paramedic staff, a further 1,200 technicians, the accident and emergency service is accessed through the public 999 system. Ambulance responses are now prioritised on patient requirement; the Scottish Ambulance Service maintains three command and control centres in Scotland, which facilitate handling of 999 calls and dispatch of ambulances. These three centres have handle over 800,000 calls per year; the AMPDS system is used for call prioritisation, provides post-dispatch instructions to callers allowing for medical advice to be given over the phone, prior to ambulance arrival. Clinical staff are present to provide tertiary triage.
Co-located with the Ambulance Control Centres are patient transport booking and control services, which handle 1 million patient journeys per year. The Scottish Ambulance Service maintains a varied fleet of around 1,500 vehicles; this includes Accident and Emergency ambulances single-response vehicles such as cars and small vans for paramedics, patient-transport ambulances which come in the form of adapted minibuses and support vehicles for major incidents and events, specialist vehicles such as 4x4s and tracked vehicles for difficult access. The unique geography of Scotland, which includes urban centres such as Edinburgh and Glasgow, areas of low-population such as Grampian and the Highlands, the Island communities mean that fleet provision has to be flexible and include different approaches to vehicle construction. In the past, 4x4-build ambulances on van chassis have been used in more rural areas, traditional van-conversions in more urban. With a large fleet upgrade project being commissioned in 2016, the business case was made to move to a box-body on chassis build, to provide some flexibility and more resilient parts procurement.
Most of these replacement ambulances have been based on either Mercedes or Volkswagen chassis, with a mixture of automatic or manual transmissions. The equipment used on board Scottish Ambulance Service vehicles broadly falls in line with NHS Scotland and allows for intraoperability in most cases. Equipment is replaced at regular service intervals; the uniform falls in line with the NHS Scotland National Uniform standard, in keeping with the uniform standard described by the National Ambulance Uniform Procurement group in 2016. Amongst cost and comfort considerations, all Scottish Ambulance Service Staff now wear the national uniform which comprises a dark green trouser / shirt combination. Personal Protective Equipment are issued to all staff and denote rank / clinical rank by way of epaulette and helmet markings; the national headquarters are in west side of Edinburgh and there are five divisions within the Service, namely: The Patient Transport Service carries over 1.3 million patients every year.
This service is provided to patients who are physically or medically unfit to travel to hospital out-patient appointments by any other means can still make their appointments. The service handles non-emergency admissions, transport of palliative care patients and a variety of other specialised roles. Patient Transport Vehicles come in a variety of forms and are staffed by Ambulance Care Assistants, whom work
