HALF of ambulances called to deal with life-threatening injuries in Lyme Regis failed to meet national targeted response times last year.

Following a Freedom of Information request figures gathered by the Bridport & Lyme Regis News found that over the last 12 months, in the DT7 postcode, the success rate for ‘red’ calls was just 50 per cent – while the rate was 64 per cent in neighbouring DT6.

Targets set nationally expect a response within eight minutes in 75 per cent of cases.

The ‘red one’ and ‘red two’ call-outs are for patients with conditions that may be ‘immediately life threatening’ and ‘may be life threatening’.

South Western Ambulance Service said it is one of only two ambulance services meeting the ‘red one’ performance target overall, 84 per cent of the time.

A spokeswoman said: “All ambulance services find it a challenge to meet response times in more rural areas. 

“The low number of calls and the wide geographical spread of incidents in rural areas means that journey times can sometimes exceed the eight minute target.

“In terms of ‘red’ incident responses, across both postcode areas, the longest response time was 46 minutes, with just 21 out of 1,492 red responses over 30 minutes in total across the two areas.”

Cllr Daryl Turner, who represents Lyme Regis at town, district and county level, has personally experienced problems with ambulance response times.

His mother died the day after waiting almost an hour for an ambulance.

He said: “I have heard of numerous occurrences of long delays and indeed have personal experience with my mum. 

“I did send a complaint to the South Western Ambulance Trust and because I was unsatisfied with their findings, I sent my issue to the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman. 

“I still regard the event as a service failure from primary prioritization to a response time from first call at 11.10am to arrival at 12.02pm – 52 minutes.

“My mother was 88, had a pacemaker, was on warfarin and fractured her hip, lying on a wet lane for nearly an hour. She passed away the next day.”

Last year, for non-emergency ‘green’ call outs, in the DT6 area, patients had to wait more than one hour for an ambulance on 181 occasions. This included 26 patients waiting two hours or more, 13 patients waiting more than three hours and even one patient waiting four hours and 21 minutes for an ambulance.

In the Lyme Regis area, 41 patients waited more than an hour, including eight patients who waited more than two hours and four patients facing a wait of longer than three hours.

Bridport Cllr Ros Kayes said that ambulance staff have told her there is “insufficient coverage” across west Dorset.

She said: “These findings come as no surprise.

“Ambulance coverage has been a big problem here for some time.

“Staff I have spoken to believe this is insufficient coverage. Often the ambulances will have to take a patient to Bournemouth which means there is no cover on the area. Sometimes our night time ambulance has had to go to Exeter or even Plymouth.

“Imagine the combination of these poor response times with the moving of night-time maternity cover from Dorchester to Bournemouth, and the danger to mums-to-be and their babies if lack of transport is added to distance.”

SWAST said it has a number of measures to help improve the service in rural areas.

A spokeswoman said: “We have a number of initiatives in place that will improve our response performance in rural areas as well as delivering even better care. 

“These include community responder schemes, co-responder schemes with the fire service, the installation of public access defibrillators and defibrillators within care homes.

“These initiatives do not change the priority or category of a 999 call, they just ensure that a patient suffering a life-threatening emergency can begin to receive the required care in the crucial first few minutes of an emergency while an ambulance is en route.”