Wellington Free Ambulance Service provides free to the patient emergency ambulance paramedic services to the region of greater Wellington, including Wellington, the Kapiti Coast (to Waikanae), Upper Hutt, Lower Hutt, Wainuiomata and Porirua.

In addition to this, the ambulance service provides an inter-hospital patient transfer service to the Capital and Coast District Health Board and Hutt Valley District Health Board.  This service also includes meeting air ambulances at the Wellington airport, and transferring patient’s to and from the Wellington and Hutt Valley Hospitals.

Operationally we cover a population of 420,000 people, living in an area of 290 square kilometres (28990 hectares). We operate from nine ambulance stations, including Newtown, Thorndon (also our Headquarters and Fleet services Workshop), Lower and Upper Hutt, Porirua, Paraparaumu, two operational bases in Waikanae and Wainuiomata and a response post on the Wellington Waterfront.

Click here to view a map of our ambulance station locations.

Service Performance

Wellington Free Ambulance is contracted by both:

The Ministry of Health (MOH) - to provide emergency ambulance paramedic services and transport for medical emergencies in the community, and non-emergency inter-hospital transfers between the Wellington, Kenepuru and Hutt Valley hospitals; and

The Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) - to provide emergency and some non-emergency ambulance transport for their claimants.

Air ambulance services in Wellington are provided by the Life Flight Trust, with Wellington Free Ambulance Intensive Care Paramedics providing the medical aircrew for helicopter emergency responses.

Our Ministry of Health contract requires an ambulance to be located at a life threatening emergency within 8 minutes 50% of the time, from when the Emergency Ambulance Communications Centre has enough information to dispatch an ambulance in urban areas.

In a rural area, we are required to achieve a response within 19 minutes, 50% of the time. The difference between urban and rural is a town population of 15,000 or less being classified as rural. The majority of the Wellington Free Ambulance response area is considered urban.

Complaints / Feedback

Sometimes people might not be totally satisfied with our service - how to register your concern about the service you received.

The management of Wellington Free Ambulance welcomes expressions of concern from the users of our ambulance service, as this is a way of learning and improving our service that we provide to patients.

To register a concern, please write (stating dates, times, situation and reasons for your concern) to:

General Manager Ambulance Services
Wellington Free Ambulance
P.O. Box 601
WELLINGTON

Or email your concerns via our online form

Wellington Free Ambulance welcomes comments from satisfied customers and patients, and the opportunity to share your story in our regular Pulse newsletter.

To register your satisfaction you can either write to the General Manager Ambulance Services, phone our reception on (04) 499-9909 or contact us via our online form.