People in Bristol with heart attacks and strokes were left waiting an average of 1hr 9mins last year, making it one of the hardest hit areas of the country. This comes as ambulance workers in the GMB union vote in favour of strike action with the National Secretary saying that "something needs to change or the service as we know it will collapse".
The local areas with the longest average waiting times for an ambulance have been revealed thanks to a Freedom of Information request by the Liberal Democrats. In some areas patients are waiting three times as long for life-threatening calls but across the UK waiting times have increased overall.
Bristol has the sixth-worst response time in the country and the picture in other parts of the region are even worse. In South Gloucestershire people are waiting an average of 1hr 11mins and for North Somerset the ambulance waiting time for category two calls is 1hr 9mins on average.
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Over the past two years the situation across the country has got worse. The latest data shows that in the last year there were only two areas in the country that did hit the NHS target of 18 minutes - Carlisle (17 minutes), and Croydon (just short of 13 minutes).
According to analysis from The Health Foundation, the longer ambulance waiting times are down to a number of factors including staff sickness commonly attributed to poor mental health and longer queues of ambulances outside hospitals.
In July 2022, more than 1 in 10 ambulances waited over an hour for patients to be admitted into hospitals – up from almost 1 in 50 in 2019. South West ambulance workers are among those across the country who have voted in favour of strike action- a decision which the GMB union says is as much about unsafe staffing levels and patient safety as it is about pay.
Rachel Harrison, GMB national secretary, said: “Ambulance workers – like other NHS workers – are on their knees. Demoralised and downtrodden, they’ve faced 12 years Conservative cuts to the service and their pay packets, fought on the frontline of a global pandemic and now face the worst cost of living crisis in a generation.
“No one in the NHS takes strike action lightly – today shows just how desperate they are. This is as much about unsafe staffing levels and patient safety as it is about pay.
"A third of GMB ambulance workers think delays they’ve been involved with have led to the death of a patient. Something has to change or the service as we know it will collapse. GMB calls on the Government to avoid a Winter of NHS strikes by negotiating a pay award that these workers deserve.”
Paramedics, emergency care assistants, call handlers and other staff from South West Ambulance Service are one of nine NHS Trusts across England and Wales set to take strike action unless the Government comes up with a deal soon. The potential strike dates will be revealed before Christmas.
A spokesperson for the South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust said: "Our ambulance clinicians strive every day to give their best to patients, but our performance has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, partly due to handover delays at emergency departments.
“Health and social care services are under enormous pressure. We are working with our partners in the NHS and social care, to do all we can to improve the service that patients receive.”
Liberal Democrat health spokesperson Daisy Cooper said in light of the recent data: “These heart-breaking figures show that in every corner of the country, targets are being missed and patients are being left waiting far too long for an ambulance to arrive.
“This stark postcode lottery means that if you suffer a heart attack or stroke, your chances of getting to hospital on time depend on where you happen to live. Every day we hear more and more devastating stories of pensioners left stranded for hours, or families watching a loved one die before a paramedic could reach them.
"Our overstretched local NHS services are collapsing under the strain of years of neglect under this Conservative government. Ministers must bring forward extra support to get ambulance services through winter as well as a long-term strategy to ensure people can get emergency care when they need it.
"That means addressing workforce shortages, fixing the social care crisis and ending the shortage of hospital beds, all of which are leaving patients in ambulances stuck outside A&E for hours.”
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