Welsh Ambulance Service reveals time wasted by crews responding to hoax calls amid a three-year-increase

The number of hoax calls made to Welsh Ambulance service is (WAS) is the highest it has been in three years.

The number of hoax calls made to the Welsh Ambulance Service (WAS) has soared by 37 per cent in the last three years, a new investigation has revealed.

12 hoax calls were logged in Gwynedd, with five in Ceredigion, and three in Powys.

Fresh figures obtained by Medical Negligence Assist have found that ambulance crews across Wales have wasted more than 700 hours responding to hoax calls since 2021.

What’s more, during that time ambulance crews made a total of 463 face-to-face responses to calls that turned out to be time-wasting hoaxes.

The service has also revealed all the areas in Wales where hoax calls received an ambulance response in the last year.

Between April 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022, the service received 334 hoax calls, and responded to 84 hoax incidents face-to face.

The following year, 373 calls were made as well as 85 incidents which resulted in an in-person response from WAS crews.

In 2023/24, the figures rose again with 457 hoax calls received and a staggering 163 more face-to-face responses that proved to be malicious.

Between April 1, 2024 and October 31, 2024, another 345 hoax calls were made to WAS and crews responded in-person to another 131 hoax incidents.

The service confirmed that the total time it has spent responding to hoax or malicious calls and incidents in the last three years amounts to a whopping 701 hours - that’s equivalent to 29 days of valuable ambulance time.

Newport and Wrexham both had 18, followed by Caerphilly which logged 16.