The service launched an "urgent and comprehensive review" of its ambulance cleaning programme and reiterated its stance on patient safety, adding that "ensuring consistent high standards of cleanliness is a challenge" with so many stations, covering six counties and an area of 7,500 square-miles.

The larger stations also have the ability to house the resistance teams, which comprise Class C or C1 vehicles laden with equipment for response to major incidents.

Some response posts consist of small rented industrial units spread out across a city, or reserved spots in large commercial areas or other service buildings such as fire stations.

The trust used exclusively the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter as front-line double staffed ambulances (DSA), with the exception of a single Vauxhall Movano four-wheel drive vehicle for use at Newmarket Racecourse.

In 2009, the service started the transition to a brand-new Sprinter only fleet from a wide range of other brands – including Ford, Vauxhall and older Mercedes-Benz vehicles.

2015 saw a new fleet of Citroen Relay, Fiat Ducato and Peugeot Boxer vans brought into the trust along with some of its older Renault vehicles which remain in use for bariatric transport.

The new vehicles have the ability to carry a number of patients at a time or have the capability to lock a wheelchair in place or accept a Ferno Stretcher.

Contrary to popular belief, these vehicles are rarely used for high dependency transfers, a job which is performed by the Emergency Operations side of the trust or a contracted charity (e.g. St John Ambulance England) or private company.

They are responsible for effective escalation of extended hospital handover delays to the senior management, integrated care boards and NHS England.

The tactical operations centre also houses the critical care desk (CCD), who are responsible for the allocation and dispatch of the HEMS teams and house the incident command desk supervisor who is responsible for the allocation and dispatch of resilience assets and staff, such as the HART team and NILOs and the handling of any critical or major incident.

[22] In a statement in November 2014, chief executive Anthony Marsh blamed EEAST's continued failure to meet its emergency response time targets on a lack of staff.

[20] In October 2014, EEAST apologised after claims were published in a local newspaper that a body had been left lying next to dustbins at its station in Ely, Cambridgeshire the previous month.

[23] The trust was accused of putting patient safety at risk in July 2017 because of a “fixation” with hitting response time targets, using a practice referred to as “stopping the clock” - sending a rapid response vehicle to a call within the target time, leaving the patient to wait longer for the arrival of an ambulance.

A patient taken to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, had to wait in the back of the ambulance that took him there for 4.5 hours before being seen by a doctor inside the building.

In September 2020 the CQC criticised the poor leadership of the trust for fostering bullying and not acting decisively on allegations of predatory sexual behaviour towards patients.

[33] It was required by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to sign a legally-binding agreement stating how it will protect its staff from sexual harassment in April 2021.