National Ambulance Resilience Unit (NARU)

The National Ambulance Resilience Unit's (NARU) main aim is to support the emergency preparedness, resilience and response (EPRR) objectives of NHS England. NARU works on behalf of NHS England to provide a coordinated approach to EPRR and specialist capabilities across NHS ambulance services in England. The Unit works with NHS ambulance services to support the development of appropriately trained, equipped and prepared ambulance responders to deal with hazardous or difficult situations, particularly mass casualty incidents that represent a significant risk to health.

The following are the key components of the NARU function:

• capabilities: the development, procurement, maintenance and assurance of national ambulance resilience capabilities. Part of the remit is the management of pass-through funding to NHS ambulance services for interoperable capabilities,

• education: the development and delivery of training and education for NHS staff to maintain national resilience capabilities, including pass-through funding for NHS ambulance services to train staff, including acute hospital staff,

• clinical advice: includes specialist clinical advice in relation to pre-hospital environments and clinical input to and assurance of national resilience capabilities,

• management and operations: management of the NARU service and core operations. Provision of 24/7 on call for incidents to support NHS England.

NARU is part of the delivery of EPRR policy and the NHS ambulance service in England contribution to contest, the United Kingdom's Strategy for Countering Terrorism, and Civil Resilience strategies and the Department of Health and Social Care's commitments under the UK National Security Strategy and the National Security Council.

The host of the NARU service will provide the support functions such as procurement, human resources and payroll, finance, information communications and technology, information governance and fleet and logistics.

Due to the nature of the work undertaken and the specialist knowledge required it is only possible for this to be undertaken by an English NHS ambulance service.

Tenders to be submitted via https://nhsengland.bravosolution.co.uk/web/login.html