Branston, Leicestershire
Branston is a village in the civil parish of Croxton Kerrial and Branston, in Leicestershire, England. It is geographically situated 1 mile north from the A607 road, 7 miles south-west from Grantham and 7 miles north-east from Melton Mowbray; the village is at the southern edge of the Vale of Belvoir, 3 miles south-west from Belvoir Castle. Knipton Reservoir is 700 yards to the north; the population is included in the civil parish of Croxton Kerrial. According to A Dictionary of British Place Names, Branston could be "a farmstead or a village of a man called Brant" –'Brant' from an Old English person name and'ton' for "enclosure, village, estate". In the 1086 Domesday account Branston is referred to as "Brantestone" in the Framland Hundred of north-east Leicestershire, it had 21 households, 10 villagers, 1 smallholder 6 freemen and 4 slaves, with a meadow of 16 acres and 2 mills. In 1066 Leofnoth of Branston was Lord of the Manor; the Grade II* listed Anglican parish church is dedicated to St Guthlac, originating in the 13th century with alterations up the 15th.
New chancel and nave roofs were added in 1895-96 by George Frederick Bodley and Thomas Garner, Gothic Revival architects. Further Grade II listed buildings are three 18th-century farmhouses, the early 19th-century Old Rectory, the Village Hall dating from 1843. Iron ore was quarried in two areas near Branston; the first quarry was north of the village on the east side of the Barkestone Road. Ore was first obtained in 1915 and the quarrying worked its way southwards and back northwards again a little to the east back to a point close to where it started; the quarries closed in 1949. The ore was taken by narrow-gauge tramway to the tipping dock at the terminus of the Great Northern Railway's Eaton Branch Railway from where it was taken away by railway; the quarries were worked by hand with the aid of explosives at first. A steam digger was introduced in 1923 and diesel diggers in 1936; the tramway was worked by steam locomotives. The second set of quarries were to the west of the village on either side of the Eaton Road.
Quarrying began on the south side of the road close to Eaton Grange in 1922 and finished close to the road leading to Lings Hill in 1951. In 1952, new quarries were opened on the north side of the road; the last ore was obtained in 1957. A tramway bridge had been constructed on the road to Lings Hill ready for a new quarry east of the road to be started but this quarry was never started. Quarrying was first done with the aid of steam diggers but diesel machines were introduced in 1936; the ore was taken away by a second narrow-gauge tramway via Eastwell and transhipped onto the main railway near Harby. Media related to Leicestershire at Wikimedia Commons "Branston", Genuki.org.uk. Retrieved 4 July A Vision of Britain through Time. Retrieved 4 July 2012 Croxton Kerrial and Branston Parish Council "Croxton Kerrial CP". Retrieved 4 July 2012
George Gilbert Scott
Sir George Gilbert Scott, styled Sir Gilbert Scott, was a prolific English Gothic revival architect, chiefly associated with the design and renovation of churches and cathedrals, although he started his career as a leading designer of workhouses. Over 800 buildings were altered by him. Scott was the architect of many iconic buildings, including the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station, the Albert Memorial, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, all in London, St Mary's Cathedral, the main building of the University of Glasgow, St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh and King's College London Chapel. Born in Gawcott, Buckinghamshire, Scott was the son of a cleric and grandson of the biblical commentator Thomas Scott, he studied architecture as a pupil of James Edmeston and, from 1832 to 1834, worked as an assistant to Henry Roberts. He worked as an assistant for his friend, Sampson Kempthorne, who specialised in the design of workhouses, a field in which Scott was to begin his independent career.
Scott's first work was built in 1833. It was a vicarage for a clergyman, in the village of Wappenham, Northamptonshire, it replaced. Scott went on to design several other buildings in the village. In about 1835, Scott took on William Bonython Moffatt as his assistant and as his partner. Over ten years or so, Scott and Moffatt designed more than forty workhouses,during the boom in building such institutions brought about by the Poor Law of 1834. In 1837 they built the Parish Church of St John in Staffordshire. At Reading, they built the prison in a castellated style. Scott's first church, St Nicholas', was built at Lincoln, after winning a competition in 1838. With Moffat he built the Neo-Norman church of St Peter at Surrey. Meanwhile, he was inspired by Augustus Pugin to participate in the Gothic revival. While still in partnership with Moffat, he designed the Martyrs' Memorial on St Giles', St Giles' Church, both of which helped establish his reputation within the movement. Commemorating three Protestants burnt during the reign of Queen Mary, the Martyrs' Memorial was intended as a rebuke to those high church tendencies, instrumental in promoting the new authentic approach to Gothic architecture.
St Giles', was in plan, with its long chancel, of the type advocated by the Ecclesiological Society: Charles Locke Eastlake said that "in the neighbourhood of London no church of its time was considered in purer style or more orthodox in its arrangement". It did, like many churches of the time, incorporate wooden galleries, not used in medieval churches and disapproved of by the high church ecclesiological movement. In 1844 he received the commission to rebuild the Nikolaikirche in Hamburg, following an international competition. Scott's design had been placed third in the competition, the winner being one in a Florentine inspired style by Gottfried Semper, but the decision was overturned by a faction who favoured a Gothic design. Scott's entry had been the only design in the Gothic style. In 1854 he remodelled the Camden Chapel in Camberwell, a project in which the critic John Ruskin took a close interest and made many suggestions, he added an apse, in a Byzantine style, integrating it to the existing plain structure by substituting a waggon roof for the existing flat ceiling.
Scott was appointed architect to Westminster Abbey in 1849. In 1853 he built. In 1858 he designed Christchurch Cathedral, New Zealand which now lies ruined following the earthquake in 2011 and subsequent attempts to demolish the cathedral by the Anglican Church authorities. Demolition was blocked after appeals by the population of Christchurch but the future of this historic building is still in disputeThe choir stalls at Lancing College in Sussex, which Scott designed with Walter Tower, were among many examples of his work that incorporated green men. Scott went beyond copying mediaeval English gothic for his Victorian Gothic or Gothic Revival buildings, began to introduce features from other styles and European countries as evidenced in his Midland red-brick construction, the Midland Grand Hotel at London's St Pancras Station, from which approach Scott believed a new style might emerge. Between 1864 and 1876, the Albert Memorial, designed by Scott, was constructed in Hyde Park, it was a commission on behalf of Queen Victoria in memory of Prince Albert.
Scott advocated the use of Gothic architecture for secular buildings, rejecting what he called "the absurd supposition that Gothic architecture is and intrinsically ecclesiastical." He was the winner of a competition to design new buildings in Whitehall to house the Foreign Office and War Office. Before work began, the administration which had approved his plans went out of office. Palmerston, the new Prime Minister, objected to Scott's use of the Gothic, the architect, after some resistance drew up new plans in a more acceptable style. Scott was awarded the RIBA's Royal Gold Medal in 1859, he was appointed an Honorary Liveryman of the Turners' Company and in 1872, he was knighted. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. A London County Council blue plaque marks Scott's residence at the Admiral's House on Admiral's Walk in Hampstead. Scott married Caroline Oldrid of Boston in 1838. Two of his sons George Gilbert Scott, Jr. and John Oldrid Scott, his grandson Giles Gilbert Scott, were prominent architects.
His third son, Albert Henry Scott died at the age of twe
Fire services in the United Kingdom
The fire services in the United Kingdom operate under separate legislative and administrative arrangements in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland. Emergency cover is provided by over fifty agencies; these are known as a fire and rescue service, the term used in modern legislation and by government departments. The older terms of fire brigade and fire service survive in informal usage and in the names of a few organisations. England and Wales have local fire services which are each overseen by a fire authority, made up of representatives of local governments. Fire authorities have the power to raise a Council Tax levy for funding, with the remainder coming from the government. Scotland and Northern Ireland have centralised fire services, so their authorities are committees of the devolved parliaments; the total budget for fire services in 2014-15 was £2.9 billion. Central government maintains national standards and a body of independent advisers through the Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser, created in 2007, while Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services provides direct oversight.
The devolved government in Scotland has HMFSI Scotland. Firefighters in the United Kingdom are allowed to join unions, the main one being the Fire Brigades Union, while chief fire officers are members of the National Fire Chiefs Council, which has some role in national co-ordination; the fire services have undergone significant changes since the beginning of the 21st century, a process, propelled by a devolution of central government powers, new legislation and a change to operational procedures in the light of terrorism attacks and threats. See separate article History of fire safety legislation in the United Kingdom Comprehensive list of recent UK fire and rescue service legislation: Fire services are established and granted their powers under new legislation which has replaced a number of Acts of Parliament dating back more than 60 years, but is still undergoing change. 1938: Fire Brigades Act 1938. This Act provided for centralised co-ordination of fire brigades in Great Britain and made it mandatory for local authorities to arrange an effective fire service.
1947: Fire Services Act 1947 This Act transferred the functions of the National Fire Service to local authorities. Now repealed in England and Wales by Schedule 2 of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004. 1959: Fire Services Act 1959 This Act amended the 1947 Act. It was repealed in Wales along with the 1947 Act. 1999: Greater London Authority Act 1999 This act was necessary to allow for the formation of the Greater London Authority and in turn the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. In 2002, there was a series of national fire strikes, with much of the discontent caused by the aforementioned report into the fire service conducted by Prof Sir George Bain. In December 2002, the Independent Review of the Fire Service was published with the industrial action still ongoing. Bain's report led to a change in the laws relating to firefighting. 2002: Independent Review of the Fire Service published 2004: Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 only applying to England and Wales. 2006: The Regulatory Reform Order 2005 This piece of secondary legislation or statutory instrument replaces several other acts that dealt with fire precautions and fire safety in premises, including the now defunct process of issuing fire certificates.
It came into force on 1 October 2006. The DfCLG has published a set of guides for non-domestic premises: 2006: The Government of Wales Act 2006 gave the National Assembly for Wales powers to pass laws on "Fire and rescue services. Promotion of fire safety otherwise than by prohibition or regulation." But does not prevent future legislation being passed by the UK government which applies to two or more constituent countries. There are further plans to modernise the fire service according to the Local Government Association, its website outlines future changes, specific projects: "The aim of the Fire Modernisation Programme is to adopt modern work practices within the Fire & Rescue Service to become more efficient and effective, while strengthening the contingency and resilience of the Service to react to incidents. " The fire service in England and Wales is scrutinised by a House of Commons select committee. In June 2006, the fire and rescue service select committee, under the auspices of the Communities and Local Government Committee, published its latest report.
Committee report The committee's brief is described on its website: The Communities and Local Government Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure and policy of the Department for Communities and Local Government and its associated bodies. Government response This document, the subsequent government response in September 2006, are important as they outlined progress on the FiReControl, efforts to address diversity and the planned closure of HMFSI in 2007 among many issues. Both documents are interesting as they refer back to Professor Bain's report and the many recommendations it made and continue to put forward the notion that there is an ongoing need to modernise FRSs. For example, where FRSs were inspected by HMFSI, much of this work is now carried out by the National Audit Office. Fire Control On 8 February 2010 the House of Commons Communities and Local Governm
Grantham
Grantham is a town in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. It straddles the London–Edinburgh East Coast Main Line and the River Witham and is bounded to the west by the A1 north–south trunk road. Grantham lies about 23 miles south of the county town, the City of Lincoln and about 22 miles east of Nottingham; the population in 2016 was put at 44,580. Grantham was the birthplace of the UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Isaac Newton was educated at its King's School, while Thomas Paine worked there as an excise officer in the 1790s. Grantham-born Edith Smith became the United Kingdom's first female police officer in 1914; the town produced the first running diesel engine in 1892 and the UK's first tractor in 1896. Grantham lies close to an ancient Roman road, it was the scene in 1643 of Oliver Cromwell's first win over Royalists during the English Civil War, at Gonerby Moor. The origin of "Grantham" is uncertain, although the name is said to be Old English "Granta+ham", meaning "Granta's homestead".
It appeared as early as 1086 in the Domesday Book in its present form of Grantham, but was recorded variously as Grandham and Graham. The place name element grand could mean "gravel"; the name of the town is the origin of the Scottish surname, now used as a given name, Graham. Late neolithic vessels from a burial were found at Little Gonerby, in the north of the town, in 1875. A number of flint blades have been found, including from near Welham Street to the south-east of the town centre and from near Barrowby where a macehead has been found. At Little Gonerby a neolithic settlement site was discovered with finds of pottery and flints. There have been a number of finds of flint and stone tools including palaeolithic hand-axes, from the Cherry Orchard Estate, to the north-east of the town centre, from near North Lodge on the hill top south of Barrowby. Mesolithic flints have been recovered from the Cherry Orchard Estate as well as from sites to the west of Great Gonerby To the north-east of the town centre a Bronze Age bucket and urn cemetery, with cremation burials and ploughed-out barrows, has been recorded.
Bronze Age flint scatters have been found in several places on the higher ground near Barrowby. At Saltersford a Bronze Age ingot and a rapier were found. There are several ring ditches on the higher ground above Saltersford. According to the Chronicles of Raphael Holinshed, Gorbonianus, a legendary King of the Britons built Grantham between 292 and 282 BC; the Domesday account notes Queen Edith having 12 carucates to the geld, with no arable land outside the village. She had a hall, two carucates and land for three ploughs without geld, 111 burgesses. Ivo had one church and four mills rendering 12 shillings, eight acres of meadow without geld; the lands of Bishop Osmond were described: "In Londonthorpe... is land for two ploughs. This land belongs to the church of Grantham. In Spittlegate, St Wulfram of Grantham has half a carucate of land to the geld. In Great Gonerby, St Wulfram of Grantham has 1 carucate of land. There is land for twelve oxen."On 4 December 1290, the funeral cortège of Eleanor of Castile, accompanied by her husband King Edward I, stopped at Grantham on its way from Lincoln to Westminster Abbey.
An'Eleanor Cross' was erected in the town, although its precise location has not been identified. In 1363 "The Castles and towns of Stamford and Grantham" were granted to Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York, fifth son of Edward III of England; the question has been raised as to whether Grantham House was the site of a castle, however, no such site has been reliably identified. The street name "Castlegate" cannot be traced further back than the 17th century. There are references to a Hospital in Grantham as early as the 1330s. Grantham received its Charter of Incorporation in 1463; the town developed. The Nottingham Line arrived first in 1850 the London line – the Towns Line from Peterborough to Retford – arrived in 1852; the Boston and Midland Counties Railway arrived in 1857. The town received gas lighting in 1833; the corporation became a borough council in 1835. Little Gonerby and Spittlegate were added to the borough in 1879; the town had been in the wapentake of Loveden, the town included three townships of Manthorpe with Little Gonerby and Spittlegate with Houghton and Walton.
Grantham Golf Club was founded in 1894. The club continued until the onset of the Second World War; until the 1970s the housing estates west of the town centre were green fields. Green Hill, on the A52, was a green hill. In July 1975 the National Association of Ratepayers' Action Groups was formed in Grantham by John Wilks, its Chairman, being a forerunner of the TaxPayers' Alliance; the town has a long military history dating back to the completion of the Old Barracks in 1858. During the Dambuster Raids Royal Air Force missions in May 1943, the RAF Bomber Command's No. 5 Group and the operation HQ was in St Vincents, a building, owned by Aveling-Barford and housed a district council planning department. It was built by Richard Hornsby in 1865, lived in by Richard Hornsby's son, is now a private house. In 1944, this was the headquarters for the USAAF's Ninth Air Force's IX Troop Carrier Command, being known as Grantham Lodge. During the early part of the war Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet lived in the town.
RAF Spitalgate trained pilots during both world wars as a Royal Flying Corps establishment. It was the first military airfield in Lincolnshire, it has never been an operational bomber base.
Domesday Book
Domesday Book is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William the Conqueror. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states: Then, at the midwinter, was the king in Gloucester with his council.... After this had the king a large meeting, deep consultation with his council, about this land. Sent he his men over all England into each shire, it was written in Medieval Latin, was abbreviated, included some vernacular native terms without Latin equivalents. The survey's main purpose was to determine what taxes had been owed during the reign of King Edward the Confessor, which allowed William to reassert the rights of the Crown and assess where power lay after a wholesale redistribution of land following the Norman conquest; the assessors' reckoning of a man's holdings and their values, as recorded in Domesday Book, was dispositive and without appeal. The name "Domesday Book" came into use in the 12th century; as Richard FitzNeal wrote in the Dialogus de Scaccario: for as the sentence of that strict and terrible last account cannot be evaded by any skilful subterfuge, so when this book is appealed to... its sentence cannot be quashed or set aside with impunity.
That is why we have called the book "the Book of Judgement"... because its decisions, like those of the Last Judgement, are unalterable. The manuscript is held at The National Archives at London. In 2011, the Open Domesday site made the manuscript available online; the book is an invaluable primary source for historical economists. No survey approaching the scope and extent of Domesday Book was attempted again in Britain until the 1873 Return of Owners of Land which presented the first complete, post-Domesday picture of the distribution of landed property in the British Isles. Domesday Book encompasses two independent works; these were "Little Domesday", "Great Domesday" No surveys were made of the City of London, Winchester, or some other towns due to their tax-exempt status. Most of Cumberland and Westmorland are missing. County Durham is missing; the omission of the other counties and towns is not explained, although in particular Cumberland and Westmorland had yet to be conquered. "Little Domesday" – so named because its format is physically smaller than its companion's – is the more detailed survey, down to numbers of livestock.
It may have represented the first attempt, resulting in a decision to avoid such level of detail in "Great Domesday". Both volumes are organised into a series of chapters listing the fees, held by a named tenant-in-chief of the king, namely religious institutions, Norman warrior magnates and a few Saxon thegns who had made peace with the Norman regime; some of the largest such magnates held several hundred fees, in a few cases in more than one county. For example, the chapter of the Domesday Book Devonshire section concerning Baldwin the Sheriff lists 176 holdings held in-chief by him. Only a few of the holdings of the large magnates were held in demesne, most having been subinfeudated to knights military followers of the tenant-in-chief which latter thus became their overlord; the fees listed within the chapter concerning a particular tenant-in-chief were ordered, but not in a systematic or rigorous fashion, by the Hundred Court under the jurisdiction of which they were situated, not by geographic location.
As a review of taxes owed, it was unpopular. Each county's list opened with the king's demesne lands, it should be borne in mind that under the feudal system the king was the only true "owner" of land in England, under his allodial title. He was thus the ultimate overlord and the greatest magnate could do no more than "hold" land from him as a tenant under one of the various contracts of feudal land tenure. Holdings of Bishops followed of the abbeys and religious houses of lay tenants-in-chief and lastly the king's serjeants, Saxon thegns who had survived the Conquest, all in hierarchical order. In some counties, one or more principal towns formed the subject of a separate section: in some the clamores were treated separately; this principle applies more to the larger volume: in the smaller one, the system is more confused, the execution less perfect. Domesday names a total of 13,418 places. Apart from the wholly rural portions, which constitute its bulk, Domesday contains entries of interest concerning most of t
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, sometimes referred to as Britain, is a sovereign country located off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state, the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world; the Irish Sea lies between Great Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world, it is the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017. The UK is constitutional monarchy; the current monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 1952, making her the longest-serving current head of state.
The United Kingdom's capital and largest city is London, a global city and financial centre with an urban area population of 10.3 million. Other major urban areas in the UK include Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and West Yorkshire conurbations, Greater Glasgow and the Liverpool Built-up Area; the United Kingdom consists of four constituent countries: England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Their capitals are London, Edinburgh and Belfast, respectively. Apart from England, the countries have their own devolved governments, each with varying powers, but such power is delegated by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which may enact laws unilaterally altering or abolishing devolution; the nearby Isle of Man, Bailiwick of Guernsey and Bailiwick of Jersey are not part of the UK, being Crown dependencies with the British Government responsible for defence and international representation. The medieval conquest and subsequent annexation of Wales by the Kingdom of England, followed by the union between England and Scotland in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, the union in 1801 of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There are fourteen British Overseas Territories, the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, encompassed a quarter of the world's land mass and was the largest empire in history. British influence can be observed in the language and political systems of many of its former colonies; the United Kingdom is a developed country and has the world's fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It has a high-income economy and has a high Human Development Index rating, ranking 14th in the world, it was the world's first industrialised country and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The UK remains a great power, with considerable economic, military and political influence internationally, it is sixth in military expenditure in the world. It has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946.
It has been a leading member state of the European Union and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. The United Kingdom is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Council of Europe, the G7, the G20, NATO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Trade Organization; the 1707 Acts of Union declared that the kingdoms of England and Scotland were "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain". The term "United Kingdom" has been used as a description for the former kingdom of Great Britain, although its official name from 1707 to 1800 was "Great Britain"; the Acts of Union 1800 united the kingdom of Great Britain and the kingdom of Ireland in 1801, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Following the partition of Ireland and the independence of the Irish Free State in 1922, which left Northern Ireland as the only part of the island of Ireland within the United Kingdom, the name was changed to the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
Although the United Kingdom is a sovereign country, Scotland and Northern Ireland are widely referred to as countries. The UK Prime Minister's website has used the phrase "countries within a country" to describe the United Kingdom; some statistical summaries, such as those for the twelve NUTS 1 regions of the United Kingdom refer to Scotland and Northern Ireland as "regions". Northern Ireland is referred to as a "province". With regard to Northern Ireland, the descriptive name used "can be controversial, with the choice revealing one's political preferences"; the term "Great Britain" conventionally refers to the island of Great Britain, or politically to England and Wales in combination. However, it is sometimes used as a loose synonym for the United Kingdom as a whole; the term "Britain" is used both as a synonym for Great Britain, as a synonym for the United Kingdom. Usage is mixed, with the BBC preferring to use Britain as shorthand only for Great Britain and the UK Government, while accepting that both terms refer to the United K
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom provide emergency care to people with acute illness or injury and are predominantly provided free at the point of use by the four National Health Services of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Emergency care including ambulance and emergency department treatment is free to everyone, regardless of immigration or visitor status; the NHS commissions most emergency medical services through the 14 NHS organisations with ambulance responsibility across the UK. As with other emergency services, the public access emergency medical services through one of the valid emergency telephone numbers. In addition to ambulance services provided by NHS organisations, there are some private and volunteer emergency medical services arrangements in place in the UK, the use of private or volunteer ambulances at public events or large private sites, as part of community provision of services such as community first responders. Air ambulance services in the UK are not part of the NHS and are funded through charitable donations.
Paramedics are seconded from a local NHS ambulance service, with the exception of Great North Air Ambulance Service who employ their own paramedics. Doctors are provided by their home hospital and spend no more than 40% of their time with an air ambulance service. Public ambulance services across the UK are required by law to respond to four types of requests for care, which are: Emergency calls Doctor's urgent admission requests High dependency and urgent inter-hospital transfers Major incidentsAmbulance trusts and services may undertake non-urgent patient transport services on a commercial arrangement with their local hospital trusts or health boards, or in some cases on directly funded government contracts, although these contracts are fulfilled by private and voluntary providers; the National Health Service Act 1946 gave county and borough councils a statutory responsibility to provide an emergency ambulance service, although they could contract a voluntary ambulance service to provide this, with many contracting the British Red Cross, St John Ambulance or another local provider.
The last St John Division, to be so contracted is reputed to have been at Whittlesey in Cambridgeshire, where the two-bay ambulance garage can still be seen at the branch headquarters. The Regional Ambulance Officers’ Committee reported in 1979 that “There was considerable local variation in the quality of the service provided in relation to vehicles and equipment. Most Services were administered by Local Authorities through their Medical Officer of Health and his Ambulance Officer, a few were under the aegis of the Fire Service, whilst others relied upon agency methods for the provision of part or all of their services.” The 142 existing ambulance services were transferred by the National Health Service Reorganisation Act 1973 from local authority to central government control in 1974, consolidated into 53 services under regional or area health authorities. This led to the formation of predominantly county based ambulance services, which merged up and changed responsibilities until 2006, when there were 31 NHS ambulance trusts in England.
The June 2005 report "Taking healthcare to the Patient", authored by Peter Bradley, Chief Executive of the London Ambulance Service, for the Department of Health led to the merging of the 31 trusts into 13 organisations in England, plus one organisation each in Wales and Northern Ireland. Following further changes as part of the NHS foundation trust pathway, this has further reduced to 10 ambulance service trusts in England, plus the Isle of Wight which has its own provision. Following the passage of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, commissioning of the ambulance services in each area passed from central government control into the hands of regional clinical commissioning groups; the commissioners in each region are responsible for contracting with a suitable organisation to provide ambulance services within their geographical territory. The primary provider for each area is held by a public NHS body, of which there are 11 in England, 1 each in the other three countries. In England there are now ten NHS ambulance trusts, as well as an ambulance service on the Isle of Wight, run directly by Isle of Wight NHS Trust, with boundaries following those of the former regional government offices.
The ten trusts are: East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust London Ambulance Service NHS Trust North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust West Midlands Ambulance Service University NHS Foundation Trust Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS TrustThe English ambulance trusts are represented by the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, with the Scottish and Northern Irish providers all associate members. On the 14 November 2018 West Midlands Ambulance Service became the UK's first university-ambulance trust; the service was operated before reorganisation in 1974 by the St Andrews’ Ambulance Association under contract to the Secretary of State for Scotland. The Scottish Ambulance Service is a Special Health Board that provides ambulance services throughout whole of Scotland, on behalf of the Health and Social Care Directorates of the Scottish Government.
Due to the remote nature of many areas of Scotland compared to the other Home Nations, the Scottish Ambulance Service has Britain's only publi
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