Table 3 Median and 90th centile for response times to emergency transfers in the 2001 and the 2004 census.

Year of census	Median response time (hours)	90th centile response time (hours)
All emergency transfers
2001	2.0	6
2004	1.45	4.9
London Transfer Team in 2004
Team available	1.2	2.8
Stacked calls	2.3	5.3

Response time was the time taken from a transfer being requested to a team and its ambulance arriving to the baby. There was a significant reduction in the delay between the need for transfer being identified and the retrieval team reaching the baby (p<0.05). In 2004, response times for the London Neonatal Transfer Service were significantly longer when the team was engaged on another call at the time of referral and had to stack the call (p<0.01).