Scotland: Code-red patients waiting up to 18 hours for ambulances to arrive

Some code-red patients are waiting up to 18 hours for ambulances to arrive, it has been revealed, in delays that have been branded “scandalous”.

Freedom of Information requests from the Scottish Conservatives show that since January last year, one patient in that category waited over 17 hours for an ambulance in Lothian. Another waited 18 hours in the Highlands.

Code-red patients are those deemed to be at risk of cardiac arrest or at risk of needing resuscitation.

The figures also show one code-purple patient – those who are deemed the most critically ill and most at risk of cardiac arrest – was forced to wait over four hours for an ambulance in Glasgow in the past year.

The Scottish Ambulance Service’s (SAS) target median response time for code-purple cases is seven minutes.

Scottish Conservative shadow health secretary Dr Sandesh Gulhane described the waiting times as “scandalous” and accused the SNP of putting patients’ lives at risk due to their “chronic mismanagement” of the service.

He said: “These terrifying figures expose how patients’ lives are being jeopardised because our ambulance service is dangerously overstretched after years of chronic SNP mismanagement.

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Source: The Scotsman, 19 October 2025