page_title: East of England Ambulance Service
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: East of England Ambulance Service / History
caption_attribution_description: English: East of England Ambulance Land Rover Freelander RRV
context_page_description: The East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust is an NHS trust responsible for providing National Health Service ambulance services in the counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, in the East of England region. These consist of 5.8 million people and 7,500 square miles.
  It is one of ten ambulance services trusts providing England with emergency medical services, and is part of the NHS, receiving direct government funding for its role. There is no charge to patients for use of the service, and under the Patient's Charter every person in the United Kingdom has the right to the attendance of an ambulance in an emergency.
  As well as providing an emergency ambulance service, the trust also provides non emergency patient transport services, commercial services and special operations such as emergency planning, and hazardous materials incident response. The service also support a number of emergency charities, such as air ambulances, who provide doctors for serious incidents.
  The trust controls the mobilisation of critical care charities throughout its area.
context_section_description: The trust was formed on 1 July 2006 following the three-way merger of the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust, the East Anglian Ambulance NHS Trust and the Essex Ambulance Service NHS Trust. The result was a service covering an area of over 7,500 square miles (19,000 km²) with a population of 5.8 million people, and one which answers more than one million emergency calls per year.
  The East Anglian Ambulance NHS Trust had been formed in 1994 from the three-way merger of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk Ambulance Services.
  In 2009, the trust was censured by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) after inspection of an ambulance depot and seven of its 100 ambulance stations found patient-carrying vehicles were "dirty" and that staff were "unsure of basic measures for infection prevention and control". The service launched an "urgent and comprehensive review" of its ambulance cleaning programme and reiterated its stance on patient safety, adding that "ensuring consistent high standards of cleanliness is a challenge" with so many stations, covering six counties and an area of 7,500 square-miles.
caption: Land Rover Freelander Leading Operations Manager & Rapid Response Vehicle
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