There were 1,911 people suffering from conditions like suspected strokes or heart attacks who waited more than three and a half hours of an ambulance in December in the North East, NHS figures show.
The average response time for category 2 ambulance calls - including those which could be strokes or heart attacks - was one hour, 36 minutes and 23 seconds. But 10% were waiting longer than three hours, 39 minutes for an ambulance to arrive from North East Ambulance Service.
Remarkably, this is still marginally above the average for ambulance calls of this type around England - which sees 10% waiting longer than three hours, 41 minutes. The target is that the average should be 18 minutes, with 90% of incidents responded to within 40 minutes.
