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Community First Responders (CFRs) are trained to operate within a clinically approved Scope of Practice. CFRs can be asked to attend a range of urgent and emergency medical emergencies including cardiac arrests, chest pains, breathing difficulties, strokes, choking and other similar types of call where a local and quick response may be beneficial to complement the emergency response.

Community First Responders generally respond to calls within a designated geographical area known as a polygon. The polygon is agreed between the Community First Responder scheme and the Scottish Ambulance Service. The size of the polygon may vary from scheme to scheme and will be dependent on factors such as geography, base location of volunteers, and predicted travel times.

Community First Responders (CFRs) are highly valued by the Scottish Ambulance Service and are a dedicated and valuable asset to the communities they serve across Scotland including Mid Scotland and Fife. They form an integral part of the Service’s response, especially but not solely, to Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrests (OHCA)

CFRs are community-based volunteers that, subject to their availability, work to a clinically assured scope of practice to enhance and complement, but not replace, the emergency ambulance response within an agreed geographical area.

£25,000 per annum.

Scottish Ambulance Service see volunteers as a key part of its 2030 strategy, there is an emphasis on working collaboratively with communities to improve population health, enhance the resilience of communities and deliver high quality emergency care for patients. Community First Responders are an integral component of this approach.

New volunteers must undertake a 4-day mandatory training programme and assessment, aligned to a clinically assured Scope of Practice, prior to becoming an active CFR. The course is delivered in-house by SAS that aims to equip volunteers for their role.

Co-ordination of Community First Responders (CFRs) and Wildcat Cardiac Responders sits within the Scottish Ambulance Service National Risk and Resilience Department (NRRD). The Community Resilience team within NRRD provide governance, recruitment, training, and support to CFR schemes and ensure the consistency of operating practice across Scotland.

CFRs subscribe to an agreed governance framework and clinically approved Scope of Practice. The primary focus of the role is responding to cardiac arrests, heart problems, chest pains, breathing difficulties, stroke and choking. Volunteering is flexible and there is no minimum requirement.

CFRs are dispatched, predominantly via Airwave radio, by the Alternative Resource Desk (ARD) within the Ambulance Control Centre. CFRs may also use the GoodSam app to ensure an expedited response to known and suspected cardiac arrests.

The Scottish Ambulance Service started using the GoodSAM system in 2017 in a limited capacity – initially this was aimed at SAS clinicians to register. This was paused during the Covid-19 pandemic. Full implementation of GoodSAM, which was open to all, was launched in October 2022. Since this date, effectiveness has been measured based on month on month increase to both registrations and alerts accepted through it. Data modelling is now ongoing to establish how best to optimise the system for different parts of Scotland.

The Scottish Government is aware of the importance of understanding the food delivery industry, and the evolving challenges with measuring activity in this area.

At present, there are no official estimates of revenues or employment in the food delivery industry provided by the Office for National Statistics at UK or Scottish level, or how these have changed in recent years.

Independent organisations such as the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD) have provided estimates of the scale of employment within the food delivery industry in the UK in recent years, as part of employment in the wider “Gig Economy”. The CIPD published estimates in 2023 in their report, “The Gig Economy: What Does It Really Look Like?”, based on experimental questions in the January to March 2022 Labour Force Survey. This estimated 82,649 people were employed as food delivery drivers as part of the ‘gig’ economy in the UK overall in the previous 3 months, although there are no estimates specifically for Scotland.

There are currently no Standard Industrial Classification codes that specifically identify food delivery as an industry; there are also currently no Standard Occupational Classification codes that specifically identify food delivery as an occupation. In the absence of these, it is currently not possible to provide robust and consistent estimates of numbers of individuals employed within food service delivery in Scotland from official data sources.

Recent related ONS communications on the issue of the Gig Economy are provided below for reference.

2021: Workers in the 'Gig economy' - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

2024: Revenue generated from gig jobs in the UK - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

The findings from the Heriot-Watt study present a disturbing picture of racial and sexual abuse that food delivery drivers have experienced in the course of their work.

The Scottish Government is clear that there is no place for harassment or abuse in the workplace, and everyone deserves to be respected and to feel safe in their working environment no matter their job or industry. All employers have a duty of care to protect the health, safety and welfare of their workers.

While the legal powers governing Health and Safety and Employment are reserved, this government will continue to promote its Fair Work policy, to make workplaces fairer and more inclusive but also safer and healthier environments for all workers. We encourage all employers to have in place robust workplace policies for handling issues such as bullying or harassment.

We are developing, and will publish by summer, a delivery plan for the refreshed Equally Safe Strategy to enable its aims and vision to be progressed in a practical way. This strategy seeks to prevent and address all forms of violence against women and girls, including in the workplace, specifically violence, abuse, and exploitation directed at them because of their gender. This behaviour is predominantly carried out by men and stems from deep-rooted gender inequality.