Comment by greycol

We've discovered that ambulance drivers are only driving people to hospital for 5% of the week. As such we've cut the 20 staff that used to give 120% coverage to 5. The 4 days of coverage is still more than 8x more than needed to cover working 5% of the week, so obviously we don't expect any deaths on the days we don't have any ambulance drivers working.

In the unlikely event excess ambulance drivers are needed we'll temporarily hire them on an ad hoc basis at double the normal rate. They will obviously happily jump on this opportunity, working less than 5% of the year at double pay is much better for just those hours than being paid 60% of what you'd get as an ambulance driver in another career all year round and actually being able to afford your mortgage.