The late ambulance on Monday

AudlemOnline's 'Hit & Run' report on Monday attracted a huge readership – approaching 10,000 clicked on to read about how local resident Norman Huntbach was hit by a car when he attempted to stop three thieves stealing his fork-lift truck.

As regular readers will know, after the thieves attempted break-ins at two more properties near Adderley and towards Norton in Hales, their night of crime ended in tragedy when one was killed and another critically injured after they crashed head on with another vehicle. The third thief and the driver of the on-coming car were injured but less seriously.

Chatbox comments since the incident have focussed on the fact an ambulance did not arrive at Norman's Swanbach house within half an hour, meaning his wife drove him to Leighton Hospital after he had suffered injuries to his knee, foot and arm.

Several Chatbox comments blamed national politicians for the lack of an ambulance. This attracted the following responses from the victim who could describe the circumstances accurately. His responses were:

"The ambulance service was under pressure on Sunday night due to a lack of serviceable vehicles and a spike in demand for the service along with a large demand for A&E services causing a queue of ambulances at A&E which we saw as we arrived at the hospital. Mine was not a high priority Red case as there was no threat to life."

He later added: "I happen to know that waiting time limits have not been abandoned. The department was full of people with alcohol related injuries. One hysterical woman with a small graze on her lower lip having fallen over, one shaven headed chap with a small cut on his nose and a police officer cuffed to each hand who was shouting about it being his best arrest ever and the list goes on."

He concluded with: "The drain on resources from about 50% of those present is at the root of the problem and needs to change."

While we may doubtless be accused of trying to defend Messrs Osborne and Hunt, a little background which may suggest they are not to blame for everything ill to do with the health service, may be of interest.

AudlemOnline played a significant role in a campaign started eight years ago to improve ambulance services locally. Our involvement began after we received and published reports of five incidents where an ambulance had taken an excessive time to arrive at what were emergency situations in and around Audlem.

In one incident, although ambulance chiefs robustly denied it, the driver of the long-awaited ambulance said that he had driven from Widnes to Audlem and it had taken over an hour.

Parish Councillor Mike Hill joined forces with AudlemOnline and we were involved in a series of meetings with senior managers of the NWAS (North West Ambulance Service). As Nantwich was suffering a poor ambulance service too, the meetings included Nantwich Town Council, later Cheshire Fire Service and even a union official from the ambulance staff.

As well as those waiting overlong for ambulances, an early casualty was the then head of the NWAS who, perhaps coincidentally, after a bruising encounter on TV about the Audlem and Nantwich response times, took retirement. This was around the time that local MPs Stephen O'Brien (then MP for Eddisbury) and the newly elected Edward Timpson (Crewe & Nantwich) began attending our meetings with NWAS. They were able to interest Granada TV in the issue, hence the TV interview.

The change of leader at NWAS proved fortuitous. From being in denial of their failures, the mood changed and the quarterly meetings became far more productive with the new NWAS chief executive attending regularly.

Mike Hill was leading the Audlem advocacy focussing on establishing and gaining appropriate training and resources for the newly formed Audlem Fast Responder team. Together, we also concentrated on ambulance response times and eventually suggested that the only way to improve the situation was to relocate at least one ambulance to Nantwich rather than Leighton Hospital.

To our delight, and surprise, the NWAS agreed with this suggestion and an ambulance was based in Nantwich for 16 hours a day every day of the week. The result was apparent almost immediately with Nantwich and Audlem response times improving markedly.

We had always accepted that the official 8-minute emergency target was unrealistic for a rural village but argued that the secondary 20-minute target should be hit. For the next five years, not a single report of a late ambulance reached AudlemOnline. That doesn't mean the service was perfect necessarily, but the regular complaints we had been receiving stopped.

At the same time, many of the issues about training and support for the First Responder team were largely resolved and that team of local volunteers has since provided an invaluable service.

It has to be said that very rarely did lack of funding come up in our debates. The issue initially was getting the NWAS to accept there was a problem and that only moved to action once they had a new chief executive who was prepared get involved with the public and who addressed the issues raised by us, the Nantwich team and the two MPs.

More recently, ambulances not turning up as quickly as they should has re-emerged as an issue. My wife was first on the scene to a head-on collision recently on the A525 towards Woore. Now this was not down to the NWAS, as the crash was just over the border and was the responsibility of West Midlands Ambulance service, but it was over 30 minutes before an ambulance arrived.

On Monday, it was thirty minutes before Norman Huntbach and his family gave up waiting for an ambulance and drove him to Leighton themselves.

The description Norman gives of ambulances queued up at Leighton reminded me of our debates with NWAS back in 2008 – 2011. Setting targets like the 4-hour deadline at A&E, simply meant the hospital often wouldn't accept patients if they felt it would jeopardise their target. The result: patients stuck outside in an ambulance meaning that the vehicle and crew could not respond to other calls.

It's so often the case with organisations with huge numbers of administrators – and the NHS certainly fits that description – that all too often ways to circumvent a target will be found if it cannot be met. Speak to any member of frontline staff in the NHS today and raise 'administration' with them and many will tell you very frankly what they think.

NWAS supplied the local response times to Audlem Parish Council for a number of years after 2008. We suspect that has ceased as it has not been raised at parish council meetings for some years.

If the response times are slipping, as it seems they did with Monday's incident, perhaps the parish council resuming its oversight of ambulance responses may be a very useful service to all local residents. The figures are easily obtained and broken down by location. Hopefully, the NWAS will oblige.

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.