Gwent 999 times still off target (From Campaign Series)

Gwent 999 times still off target

4:30pm Thursday 4th February 2010

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AMBULANCE response times for Gwent failed to meet Assembly targets in December, according to the latest figures.

Newport, Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly, Torfaen and Monmouthshire, all failed to meet the 60 percent target ordered by the Assembly for ambulances arriving at the scene of category A calls, where the situation is life-threatening, within eight minutes.

Figures released yesterday showed that all five areas in Gwent fell below the target set for local authority areas, with Gwent figures ranging between 52.4 and 58.9 percent.

This is despite four out of five areas in Gwent outperforming the targets in November, when responses for this type of call remained above 60 per cent.

The benefits of new emergency response staff and vehicles in Torfaen during the summer, and the effort of new community responder teams there, seemed to have helped transform its performance in November.

Only Monmouthshire fell below the 60 percent target that month and remained at 52.5 percent in December.

Yet response times for the other Gwent authorities decreased considerably during December.

In Caerphilly they fell by nearly 15 per cent, in Torfaen by 12.5 per cent, in Blaenau Gwent by nearly 10 per cent, and in Newport by nine per cent.

The overall figure for Wales was 59.4 per cent, which was around six percent less than the figure for November.

The 60 per cent response time target was only achieved in eight of Wales’ 22 local authority areas in December.

There were just over 30,000 emergency calls made in Wales that month, 3,000 more than the number received in November, but just half a per cent higher than December 2008.

Compared with December 2008 however, when the worst response times figures were recorded in many areas of Gwent, the figures are much improved.

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