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999 Just Had Its Busiest June On Record. Now They Want To Add Eight More Miles.

28 July 2026 · Save Ormskirk Children's A&E campaign

The system that's meant to catch our kids when the children's A&E moves is already buckling under record demand.

Ambulance crews answered 894,143 calls to 999 in June 2026 — an average of nearly 29,805 a day, and 10% more than the same month last year. That's not a quiet Tuesday. That's the busiest June on record for NHS England, in the same year our children's A&E is due to be moved 8 miles away.

We keep hearing that moving Ormskirk's children's A&E to Southport is manageable because "the demand doesn't disappear, it just gets absorbed." But absorbed by what, exactly? Every part of the system that's supposed to catch our kids when Ormskirk isn't the answer anymore is already stretched thin.

The ambulance service is missing its own target

North West Ambulance Service and its counterparts operate against a 15-minute national standard for handing patients over at hospital doors — and across England that standard is, in NHS England's own words, "very difficult to achieve and sustain" because of capacity constraints inside the hospitals themselves. Nationally, four of England's ten ambulance trusts are expecting to miss their headline response time target for 2026–27. In the North West, Category 2 calls averaged 29 minutes 59 seconds across 2025/26 — a single second inside target. There is no slack in that number. None.

Every extra mile an ambulance drives to Southport instead of Ormskirk is a mile it isn't driving to the next 999 call. When the whole system is running at 29:59 against a 30-minute target, eight extra miles isn't a rounding error — it's the margin.

GPs and 111 are already the overflow valve

63.5 million patients are now registered with a GP practice in England — up 6.6 million since 2015 — while the number of fully qualified full-time GPs has actually fallen by 408 over the same period, to 28,956. GP teams are still delivering more than 1.5 million appointments a day, the highest number on record. NHS 111 alone triages over 16.6 million calls a year, and nearly half of those callers get sent straight to primary care — the same GPs who are already stretched thinner than at any point in a decade.

This is the "overflow" that's supposed to catch worried parents who decide Southport is too far, too late at night, too hard to reach. It's already full.

What we're asking for

We're not against Southport, and we're not against the staff anywhere in this system — they're the ones holding it together while it strains. Our fight is with the people who approved a plan to add distance to a system that's already missing its own targets, without ever explaining where the extra capacity is meant to come from.

The Health Secretary can still call in this decision. Lancashire's cross-party health scrutiny committee has asked for it. Our MP has asked for it. We're asking again: pause this, and show your working on how an already-overstretched system copes with eight more miles.

Sources: NHS England, 'Warm weather and World Cup drives record NHS demand as satisfaction with GPs continues to bounce back', July 2026 — 894,143 calls to 999 answered in June 2026, averaging 29,805 per day, 10% higher than June 2025.,NHS England North West, 'NHS in the North West reports improved winter – but more to do', March 2026 — average Category 2 ambulance response time for 2025/26 was 29 minutes 59 seconds against a 30-minute objective; medium-term planning guidance targets 25 minutes by March 2027.,Reporting on ambulance trusts' 2026–27 operational plans — four of England's ten ambulance trusts expect to miss their headline response time target for 2026–27; national ambulance handover standard at Emergency Departments is 15 minutes and described by NHS England as very difficult to achieve and sustain.,NHS England Digital, 'Patients Registered at a GP Practice' and 'Appointments in General Practice', May 2026 — 63.5 million patients registered with GP practices in England (up 6.6 million since 2015); 28,956 FTE fully qualified GPs, down 408 since 2015; GP teams delivered over 1.5 million appointments per working day, the highest on record; 30.0 million appointments recorded in May 2026.,NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Yorkshire and Humber, 'An analysis of NHS 111 demand for primary care services' — NHS 111 triages over 16,650,745 calls a year, with approximately 48% of callers triaged to a primary care disposition.

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