After several years of volunteering with St John Ambulance (SJA), including revitalising the training programme for my local units and volunteering full-time as an ambulance crewman at the very start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was dismissed for gross misconduct in August 2020.

This report contains my final account of this process and St John Ambulance’s manifest failings before, during and after it. An interim report, which was submitted to the SJA Internal Audit team, the CQC and the Charity Commission, is available here; it is much larger and flabbier, but serves as a potentially interesting time capsule, having largely been written during the initial weeks of the investigatory process, when I still had faith and trust in my colleagues.

This report comes following the conclusion of SJA’s final, self-exculpatory whistleblowing investigation, and concludes that the organisation is beyond hope for reform.

Bottom Line, Up Front ¶

St John Ambulance (SJA) is broken, and has demonstrated no interest in changing. As a result, SJA poses a danger both to those who provide its services and to those who receive them.

A toxic internal culture has led to an apparent proliferation of both employees and volunteers, from the front-line up to the highest reaches of directorship, who are at best woefully under-equipped to perform their roles effectively and, at worst, active participants in abusive behaviour towards their colleagues, up to and including incredibly serious acts of malicious dishonesty.

Serious concerns, when raised, are minimised or utterly disregarded. From recklessly sending out unsupported volunteers in order to achieve pledged staffing targets to maintaining an investigatory process that is both powerfully counterproductive and utterly neglectful of the rights and well-being of those under investigation, SJA leadership have failed to safeguard their staff and volunteers and have put patients and members of the public at risk.

Having spent well over a year attempting to get SJA to accept responsibility for its actions to no avail, it is clear that no internal process is able to result in change. Equally, it is clear that SJA is not capable, let alone interested, in doing so. In addition, neither applicable regulator appears to have taken any action on the concerns raised. I do not believe that not speaking up is a valid option, leaving only the public release of this account as the appropriate course of action.

It is my belief that the worst-case scenario of the current state of things continuing is that, under exceptional circumstances, an SJA employee or volunteer, patient or member of the public may come to serious harm. I would rather raise the alarm now and risk being seen as overreacting, than to not do so and for the same realisation to only occur following an inquest.