Air ambulance seeks to expand night service

The air ambulance charity had its busiest year ever in 2023 responding to 2,124 incidents

An air ambulance service hopes to expand its service to be able to respond to calls at night across its whole region.

Great North Air Ambulance Service (GNAAS) has helicopters flying in daylight, but at night has two rapid response vehicles; one covering Cumbria, the other the rest of the North-East.

Cumbria's is currently only available from Thursday to Sunday.

GNAAS wants to raise up to £500,000 to expand that to every night, as well as continuing to care 24 hours a day in the rest of the region.

GNAAS want a critical care team available 24 hours a day across the whole of the North East and Cumbria

Last year, GNAAS’ critical care teams based in Eaglescliffe and Langwathby responded to 745 incidents at night using rapid response vehicles.

Gordon Ingram, head of operations for GNAAS says they can make a vital difference.

"We take a doctor to the scene of an accident, we can provide surgical intervention, we can replace blood, we can provide an anaesthetic by the roadside," he explained.

Running GNAAS costs £23,000 every day

The charity receives no government funding and has to raise £8.5m a year through public donations which, Mr Ingram says, is "a huge challenge".

"To expand our night-time service we need to find even more," he said.

"We may have to dip into our limited reserves to keep going so we really need the public to help."

Since the service began in 2002 it has responded to more than 23,500 callouts, mostly road traffic collisions.