West Midlands Ambulance Service sending out 'clear message' staff abuse is unacceptable
The service is reminding people to not abuse staff members, after we exclusively revealed they'd been a 28% rise in the total number of incidents reported in the 2025/26 financial year
West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) has said it will continue to push to make sure those who physically and verbally abuse staff are held accountable for their actions.
It comes after we exclusively revealed yesterday (29 June) the total number of reported incidents across the 2025/26 financial year had risen by 28% from the 2024/25 period.
Data obtained from a submitted Freedom of Information (FOI) request to WMAS revealed 3,020 were recorded during 2025/26, 812 being physical, with 2,208 verbal, compared to 2,351 in 2024/25.
The total works out on average of around eight cases a day, reacting to the latest figures, head of security and safety, Dan Knight, said: "It's really disappointing that we're still seeing this despite all of the campaigns that we've been doing and the public messaging.
"You don't come to work to be assaulted, abused, certainly in the nature of our work, all of our staff come together to help those that are injured and save lives.
"They don't come to work to receive some quite nasty and hideous verbal abuse against our call assessors or physical assaults against our staff."
A call assessor for WMAS had spoke about how she herself has experienced things such as death threats made to her and her family and ones of sexual violence.
One of the service's assistant chief ambulance officers, Jeremy Brown, labelled the increase as both "concerning" and "alarming", adding it provides lots of support for those who have experienced it but people have left their job because of the abuse they've received.
The assaulting an emergency worker offence was introduced in 2018, with guidance updated last year by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to encourage prosecutors to consider the full range of available offences when charging assaults, to help deliver swifter justice.
Mr Knight said body-worn cameras for those attending call-outs and CCTV in ambulances help capture the evidence needed to push for prosecutions, but it's vital the public get the message not to abuse staff.
"We want to make it really clear that if you do assault our staff, then we will prosecute this and push this through, because we want to make it clear that this is not okay, and our staff should be able to come to work without fear of being assaulted," he said.
"We deliver training to all of our stuff on conflict resolution, that's all around de-escalating and recognising signs of sort of violence or any sort of things to look out for in the rooms, like not backing themselves into corners and things like that.
"That’s delivered annually, we shouldn't have to deliver that honestly, but it's the nature of the way that we are in now that we're delivering that."
Other figures from the FOI showed back in 2020/21, 1,671 incidents were reported, the number rising to 1,794 for 2021/22, and again to 1,849 for 2022/23.
It reached over 2,000 in 2023/24 with 2,348 recorded, before making it to those totals for the last two periods.