Ambulances ahead of target says NWAS chief executive

Audlem Parish Councillor Mike Hill has received a reply from John Burnside, the chief executive of the North West Ambulance Service (NWAS), to his email – summarised last week on Audlem Online – complaining about the downgrading of the First Responder service and the fact that NWAS had failed in every emergency incident to get an ambulance to Audlem within the target time.

According to Mr Burnside, the point on targets is wrong. He says: "I must however correct the point you have made around failing targets. NWAS is commissioned collectively by all the Primary Care Trusts across the North West to achieve a response time of eight minutes for 'red' calls in 75 percent of cases. This target must be achieved in two ways:

• Across the North West as a whole

• In each of the previous four ambulance trust areas, ie Cumbria, Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Cheshire & Merseyside.

"For the financial year 2007/08, NWAS achieved 75.61 percent for Category A calls across the region and 75.5 percent for Category A calls across Cheshire & Merseyside. These are service-wide targets and are not expected to be met in every Local Authority or Parish within the North West."

Phew, 75.61% overall and 75.5% in Cheshire and Merseyside. The celebrations at ambulance HQ must have gone on long into the night when these magnificent statistics came through!

Unfortunately, while Mr Burnside goes on to say: "I am pleased to be able to tell you that the performance figure for Cheshire has improved over the last year and continues to improve," those that have studied the figures closely, or have been involved in incidents, know that they have been massaged, manipulated and fiddled. Still, despite this manipulation, only 75.61% and 75.5% of emergency Grade A calls have been dealt with within the target time.

Unfortunately, there is no mention in Mr Burnside's letter of what has really happened locally – such as an 85-year old man lying in the road with a severely broken leg and hip for an hour, or a wife watching her husband violently ill while they waited 70 minutes for an ambulance to drive 45 miles from Widnes. The important thing is the '75%' target has been hit – even if there has been a 100% failure rate in Audlem.

Instead of writing letters like this, we suggest Mr Burnside should be asking how, under his leadership, a once respected public service attracted large numbers of people last month on to a march through Nantwich protesting about the NWAS. Nantwich, no less, hardly a hotbed of protest, which saw an unprecedented demonstration against a key emergency service.

Mike Hill says he was incandescent with rage after reading Mr Burnside's letter because it avoided responding to legitimate questions – such as how the 'ambulance response' figures mysteriously became 'first response' figures when serious inconsistencies were found in the statistics sent to Audlem Parish Council.

We understand others in the county are equally angry with the NWAS' recent behaviour, so much so that the next thing we are expecting is calls for Mr Burnside's resignation. It will, however, be tough to dislodge a man achieving an incredible 75.61% success rate for emergency calls against a target of 75%.

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