Message from Chief Executive Jason Killens

14.05.25

Please see below an important message from Chief Executive Jason Killens.

After nearly seven fantastic years at the Welsh Ambulance Service as Chief Executive, I will be moving on to pastures new to take up a new post as Chief Executive of London Ambulance Service.

While I’m very excited to take up the London job in my home city, it will be a wrench to leave Wales, which has been such a great privilege to serve.

I think it’s fair to say that the past seven years have been amongst the most challenging and rewarding of my career, as they have been for so many of us.

When I arrived from South Australia in September 2018, little did I know that 18 months later we’d be facing the Covid-19 pandemic, and all the challenges that would bring.

In many ways, I think the pandemic exemplified my time here at WAST – a period when we truly saw the commitment, resilience and compassion of our people, working day in day out in the face of the unknown, with passion and purpose.

And while, hopefully, those pandemic days are well behind us, they only proved what I had already learnt in my first year and a half at WAST – that this is a special organisation with special people, who consistently put patients at the heart of everything they do.

In more recent years, we’ve taken huge strides in updating our clinical model.

The changes we have made in recent months, with the support of our commissioners and Welsh Government, and with an innovative new performance framework due to launch in July, will position WAST as the leading ambulance service in the UK, something of which I am immensely proud.

This is down to the sheer hard work and determination of so many people across the organisation, who recognised that we had to do something different if we were to reduce the levels of harm being experienced by our patients and that our skilled and talented staff held the key to working through what “different” could look like, and how it could work.

I have no doubt that the changes we are making are the right thing to do, and that our patients, and our people, will benefit from them through a safer, more clinically appropriate service that better meets their needs.

During all of these seminal moments during my time at WAST, from changing our model of care, to working through the pandemic, gaining university trust status, challenging our culture to create a safer and more equitable working environment, and giving WAST a voice and profile at national level as Chair of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE), I have been supported by a great Board and Executive Leadership Team, but mostly by our fantastic people, in corporate, support, operational and clinical roles, all working together to deliver the best we can for our patients and the people of Wales.

While there is still a long way to go, I am confident that the Welsh Ambulance Service will continue to evolve and develop and, with the recent findings of the Ministerial Advisory Group set to reduce handover time expectation to a maximum of 45 minutes, the people of Wales will have a modern and forward thinking ambulance service of which they can be proud.

I will continue to lead WAST with pride and commitment over the important coming months while interim arrangements are finalised and the process of recruiting my successor begins. 

In the meantime, I want to thank you for the support I have received over the last seven years, and which I know you will continue to offer the organisation in the future.

I will always be a supporter of WAST and, in my capacity both as Chair of AACE and as the new CEO of London Ambulance Service, will be championing some of the great initiatives we have led here in the wider ambulance sector.

Prof Jason Killens KAM