More than 500 deaths in England last year after long ambulance wait

Exclusive: figure is more than double the comparable fatalities in 2021, in what a union calls a hidden scandal' of delays

More than 500 seriously ill patients died last year before they could get treatment in hospital after the ambulance they called for took up to 15 hours to reach them, an investigation by the Guardian reveals.

The fatalities included people who had had a stroke or heart attack or whose breathing had suddenly collapsed, or who had been involved in a road traffic collision. In every case, an ambulance crew took much longer to arrive than the NHS target times for responding to an emergency.