Out of Hours, Urgent or Emergency Deliveries

Telephone lines to our Customer Services teams are open:

• Monday – Friday 8am to 5pm.
• This excludes Bank Holiday Mondays and other Public Holiday dates (for example Good Friday, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day).

If an emergency occurs within our normal office hours please contact your usual Customer Services Advisor.
See our Useful Links section for contact details of our Customer Services Teams.

We will be closed for ordering and deliveries on Monday 25 August 2025.

Please ensure that orders that would have been placed on these days is placed well in advance of the Bank Holiday period, demand should be increased during previous weeks (not deferred to a single input or delivery day).

Please note: Our ordering and delivery schedule indicates the latest possible entry dates for orders. Requisition points with preferred delivery days should allow for this.

Please support us in delivering a successful service to the NHS during bank holiday or closure periods by taking the following steps:

• Review your wards and departments who normally have deliveries on the dates impacted*. Consider if they will require a delivery on an alternative day and plan accordingly.
• Complete any stock build as early as possible – avoiding double orders in the week before a Bank Holiday Monday or in the last week before Christmas / Easter.
• For any eDirect products you require – consider product lead times to ensure you receive deliveries on time.
• Speak to your Customer Services Team to discuss your ordering plans; your advice will support our operations and transport teams in effectively planning resource to deliver your requirements on time.
• If NHS Supply Chain only deliver to your site on the dates impacted*, and there is a need to explore an alternative delivery day, please contact your Customer Services Team well in advance (ideally several weeks in advance), who will then seek to arrange an additional delivery during this period.
• To ensure continuation of Standing Orders during this period, review them at least a week prior to the closure by using your internal reports TR23 on our website. Please contact your Customer Services Team if you require any assistance in doing this.
• Please return roll cages promptly as failure to do so can impact on the quality of service we can provide. In general, the wire roll cages are of a silver colour with white wheels, although some still have one set of red and one set of blue wheels. All of them are marked as ‘Property of NHS Supply Chain’ (or ‘NHS Supplies / NHS Logistics Authority’, their predecessor organisation). Some of them are marked with our old strapline, ‘Delivering healthcare products throughout the National Health Service’. We also require the require the return of roll cages labelled either ‘Palletower‘, ‘Rollstore‘ or ‘Unipart Logistics‘. See our Useful Links section for further information about roll cage management.

*Examples of dates that might be impacted by our bank holiday or seasonal closure:

• A department that has Monday only deliveries – if the next delivery date coincides with a Bank Holiday Monday.
• A normal delivery weekday that coincides with Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Year’s Day.

For emergencies that occur outside of normal office hours, please contact your supplying distribution centre using the telephone numbers listed below.

See our Downloads ▼ section for more information on our out of hours, urgent and emergency deliveries.

We recognise that occasionally situations occur when you may need clinical products in a hurry.

We aim to provide deliveries to your trust wherever possible, in relation to ‘urgent’ requests (where products are required outside the standard 48 hour delivery cycle) and ’emergency’ requests (those related to major incidents and/or medical emergencies).

In the event that you require a product urgently for a same or next day delivery, a special pick can be arranged. As special picks are more costly to process and deliver, these should be kept to a minimum.

In the event that a request is made without a valid reason i.e. it is not directly related to patient care, then an additional charge of £35 may be levied, in addition to any courier costs incurred.

See our Useful Links section to contact your Customer Services Team at the earliest opportunity with a reason for the request. They will inform you if your request can be accommodated and what charges, if any, will be applied.

These are 48 hour deliveries requested outside of your normal preferred delivery date. These are more costly to process and deliver and you may be charged for the delivery dependent upon the route.

See our Useful Links section to contact your Customer Services Team in the first instance, stating the reason for your request.

NHS Supply Chain has a proven emergency service that is available to NHS trusts 365 days per year, 24 hours per day and is committed to delivery of a stocked product within five hours of any emergency request being received.

For products that are not stocked within our distribution centre network such as eDirect products, then we will endeavour to obtain stock for delivery within the shortest time possible.