The notice was issued on 10 February 2025 following an inspection of six sites run by the trust in November 2024.

A CQC spokesperson said: ‘We found significant concerns about people's care during this inspection. We served a notice under Section 29A of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 on East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust on 10 February 2025 for failing to meet requirements relating to staff training, staffing levels, investigation and mitigation of controlled drug incidents, call wait times, the culture of the service and acting on information from staff to develop and improve the service. This is a legal document requiring them to make immediate improvements.

‘The full findings from this inspection will be published in a report on CQC's website once it has completed the usual quality assurance processes.'

Neill Moloney, chief executive of East of England Ambulance Service, said: ‘Our patients expect and deserve good quality care from us. I am sorry that the trust has not always met this expectation.

‘Following the CQC warning notice, we have made rapid improvements in the areas they identified, and we are determined to continue to improve our service to patients.'

The trust said it had taken immediate steps following the warning notice, including: redesigning mandatory training requirements to be more effective and more specific to individual roles; strengthening our controlled drug handling processes; and continuing work to improve our culture through values and behaviours.