In the last few days, the coroner at a London hearing has been summing up her findings of the inquest into the terrorist attacks in London on 7th July 2005, involving explosions on three underground trains and one of London’s iconic red buses.  The last of nine recommendations states “The Department of Health, the mayor of London and the London Resilience Team review the capability and funding of emergency medical care. She expresses concern that the current funding proposals for the emergency response of the London Air Ambulance fall “woefully short” of what emergency services were able to muster on 7 July 2005.”

Inevitably with a statement like this, it fails to dig into the reality of the situation, and there are two particular angles to look at in further detail – whether the air ambulance in London (and by inference the rest of England and Wales) should be government funded, and the ability of London’s Air Ambulance (“LAA” hereon) to fund itself.

From soundings we have made within the helicopter air ambulance operations in England and Wales, there would be a unanimous refusal of central government money if it was offered.  While it may make funding easier just being given it on a plate, the loss of operational control this would bring would lead to less flexibility and thus loss of lives.  In one online forum, a correspondent under the pseudonym of “What Limits” said on this very topic “The last thing that most of us want or need is a publicly funded Air Ambulance system. If we would have had that already, it would have been shut down. Just see what is happening to police air support right now“.  The implication here is that if the air ambulances were centrally funded like the police, it would lead to less helicopters and further distances to travel from a more regional base to an incident.  For further information on the UK police situation, see this HeliHub.com article.

The second aspect is the particular level of funding of LAA.  In an article this February, HeliHub.com analysed the air ambulance operation in Britain’s capital city to that of Devon in the south west of the country.  We concluded “The difference between these two is shocking.  The rural county of Devon has made significant progress, operates two helicopters and has sizeable reserves.  London, over six times the population of Devon, operates one helicopter and is technically insolvent.“  We also cited the fact that the average income in London was a good deal higher than Devon.  That article was a response to a press release reporting on financial input from Banco Santander, but did not quantify the cash amounts involved.  Both operations have been flying over 20 years, yet the LAA operation is by far the worst example in the UK of the ability to raise money – in the coroner’s words it does indeed fall “woefully short” in this aspect.  The model that most UK air ambulance charities is to make the community “own” their air ambulance, many running a lottery, and also with charity shops for raising both money and corporate profile in the High Street.  Let’s hope LAA’s appointment of a Business Development Manager goes towards achieving this.  For many years, LAA has had large “Virgin” titles on the side of their helicopter, and this has been a major hindrance to progress because the general public believe that Richard Branson’s Virgin Group are fully funding the helicopter.  This could not be further from the truth, with Virgin’s annual contribution thought to be around £200K and LAA tied in to carrying a disproportionately large advertisement around with them.

HeliHub.com estimates that LAA should be fully capable to fund at least three air ambulance helicopters.  A metropolis of roughly 7½ million and an area of 700 square miles deserves it.

Jeremy Parkin – HeliHub.com