The Datum Report

Occupation 6132 · Caring, leisure and other service occupations

Ambulance staff (excluding paramedics)

Half of full-time ambulance staff (excluding paramedics) in the UK earn more than £33,465 a year, and half earn less.

Ambulance staff transport sick, injured and convalescent persons and give first aid treatment in emergencies and check ambulance vehicles are roadworthy, cleaned and have all the necessary equipment.

How people enter it

Academic qualifications are not normally required. Entry requirements vary between ambulance services. Entrants must normally have possessed a full clean driving licence for one to two years and have health clearance. Entrants undertake a minimum of 2 weeks training in first aid and patient care. Successful trainees are then attached to an ambulance station where they work under the guidance of a trained supervisor for a probationary period before working unsupervised.

What the work involves

• helps patients into and out of ambulance
• drives ambulance or accompanies driver to transport patients to hospitals or other treatment centres and homes
• ascertains nature of injuries and provides first aid treatment
• cleans and disinfects ambulance after use and carries out routine care of ambulance equipment
• replenishes medical supplies in ambulance as necessary
• checks and maintains vehicles to ensure they are roadworthy

Also called

Ambulance care assistant · Ambulance driver · Ambulance service preparation operative · Ambulance technician · Emergency medical technician

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for ambulance staff (excluding paramedics), full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 7 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

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