Fund our Ambulance Services to arrive in time every time

A BBC News investigation shows there are "some rural areas in Britain where it took over 20 minutes on average for the ambulance service to reach a patient during January to October last year."

Let's make it personal. In February an ambulance was called for me by the 111 service because of a suspected life threatening condition. The Community First Responder was on duty and arrived first. The ambulance itself took 80 minutes to arrive.

We've had instances of elderly people lying-in the cold pavement with broken hips in my area waiting, waiting, waiting, for one of the 22 ambulances we have in our very large area. Twenty two! We have an ambulance station in our town, but it goes to any incident where it is required, as it should. There are insufficient staff and vehicles to cover our and every other area correctly, and this is down to funding and government cuts.

The Ambulance Services are backfilling the lack of funding, vehicles and staff with volunteer Community First Responders, who are unpaid, though well trained. But this minimal cost service is not 24/7, and cannot replace a Dual Crewed Ambulance.

Nor can a single manned emergency response vehicle, a Paramedic Car, manned by a single technician, however well trained and skilled that technician is, because it cannot provide emergency transport.

The UK is being sold short. Our rural areas are beautiful, but those living there pay a heavy price. Ambulances simply do not arrive in time. Even our city areas fall outside the expected national service levels

Austerity has crippled our public services. It is beyond time to fund the Ambulance Services fully, but not at the expense of other services,. If we need to pay more tax to fund it then we need to pay more tax.