Work begins on new Bury hub

Work begins this month on the new central reporting hub station near Bury St Edmunds.

 With an investment of approximately £10 million, the new station is scheduled to be completed in summer 2024 and will include make ready facilities, a vehicle workshop, and improved facilities for staff.

The building will mean we can improve our service for patients and the working lives of our colleagues, providing modern, fit-for-purpose facilities that better support our people and help improve response times for our patients.

Staff will move from outdated stations to modern, fit-for-purpose facilities - including a gym and well-being facilities.

Our fleet will be supported by on site servicing and ‘make ready’ crews, so vehicles are equipped and ready to go.

The move to the hub will increase our coverage - from five outdated ambulance stations to one Central Reporting Hub supported by ten Response Posts. Our vehicles will be more agile, stationed where we need them most to best respond to our patients – based on more than five years of callout data.

These Response Posts will be strategically positioned based on evidence to ensure we have crews in the right place at the right time. We are currently in negotiations to secure these sites and once confirmed a map of the Response Post locations will be published.

Inevitably, there will be changes to working arrangements as our crews move to the new facilities and we will be doing all we can to minimise disruption.

We have appointed an experienced external agency to plan and resource how staff rotas will work from the hub. This modelling will be completed shortly and shared with affected staff for consultation later this year, with consideration of existing flexible working agreements with the aim of minimising disruption to individual working arrangements.

If you have a question about the hub, please contact QandABuryHub@eastamb.nhs.uk.

Published 18th July 2023