Wiltshire paramedic reveals lack of ambulance cover

He says there should be four in use in Swindon , with four ready for backup but sometimes there are only two.

Staff set up a blog to air their concerns about Great Western Ambulance Trust.

"Everything has just gone to pot," he said "We should have up to four day ambulances on the road, but the majority have been off the road with various problems.

"The trust has said that it doesn't need mechanics.

"Around the county we have an excess of ambulances according to the trust, but that's not the case.

"It's been so desperate that we have had to get one ambulance from Amesbury.

"There are eight ambulances and two response cars but only four are ever used at one time so there's enough back up if things go wrong. There were two working ambulances at times last week.

"Two more are coming back from Fish Brothers.

"We were sitting around the other morning saying what a horrendous state of affairs to not have an ambulance.

"Last Wednesday Marlborough only had one person on responding but could not convey anyone. It's illegal to convey patients on your own.

"Two or three ambulances are coming back on now. On Tuesday and Wednesday last week there were two on. For a period last Thursday there was only two.

"Apparently, there's no problem. On telly this week chief executive Tim Lynch said everything was fine and that there's contingency plans for this. There are not.

"There's no supervisory staff in Swindon. Our line manager's got a job in Bath and Chippenham. We have not got a line manager.

"It seems like the Forest of Dean and Gloucester have these problems. Avon don't appear to be blogging that they have these problems. All the top jobs have gone to Avon people - it's like the favoured area.

"The trust wants to save £1.5m and has cut mechanics. This job is based on vehicles and we can't go on the job if there's no vehicles. There's no mechanics at night or at weekends.

"At the moment four ambulances are at Fish Brothers Renault. One of the cars is at Fish Brothers Honda.

"They are getting hammered because we are so busy. We drive as fast as we can and so they are under a lot of pressure.

"They are off road because staff feel they are unsafe to drive. It's brakes, clutches, door catches, suspension, major stuff. It needs to either go back to the manufacturer or parts need ordering.

"Everything we can utilise gets utilised. There's no fallback plan. We have no supervisory staff to make decisions, it gets left to control. Con-trol have got the whole county to deal with. We don't know why the trust is putting up with it. We know they read the blog. I don't know how much more can go on.

"The way I see it someone's eventually going to die. There's no two ways about it.

"We don't want people to get worse, we want to help them.

"The patients take it out on us, and you can see why, but it's not our fault.

"If more and more take it to their MPs or write and complain maybe something will get done.

"All the management want is targets but we've got nothing to hit the targets with. The 999 system does get abused. At the moment we are being over stretched, and people should only call us when it's absolutely necessary. Use alternative pathways like NHS Direct and GPs.

"But GPs do see us as a taxi service. They quite happily call us to take patients who could be taken in a car. Then patients will walk to the ambulance.

"There's a misconception that if you turn up in an ambulance you will be seen quicker. That's not true.

It's horrendous and passes problems on to the hospital.

"Malmesbury, Marlborough and Chippenham have to come and cover Swindon.

"We love the job but it's the politics we have that's the problem."

Spokesman hits back at claims

Melanie Chiswell, the spokeswoman for the Great Western Ambulance Trust, says they are providing an excellent service to the people of Swindon and there is no cause for concern.

"We are running at full capacity," she said.

"If there are short periods of time when we are not running in full capacity we have procedures in place to draw in vehicles from other sectors because we are a much bigger ambulance force now so we have much more fleet to use.

"Patient care is maintained at above average levels. For the past week in the area covered by the Swindon section we have been at 82 per cent and the target is 75 per cent.

"We are confident that we are providing an excellent service to local residents.

"Help from the ambulance service doesn't always come in the form of an ambulance.

"Paramedics and emergency care practitioners also use cars and try, when they can, to treat patients at home if they don't need to be taken to hospital, which is the majority of the time.

"We, like other ambulance services across the country, are trying to reduce the number of emergency journeys to hospital.

"Our highly qualified, professional road staff are able to make the decision as to what that patient needs. "We are trying to free up more ambulances to make sure that they are available for the people that really need to go to hospital. "As far as the blog is concerned a statement from us is on there. "It's thoroughly inappropriate and unprofessional and occasionally abusive to attack colleagues and other NHS professionals such as GPs on an anonymous blog site.

"It brings the reputation of the ambulance trust and the majority of our very professional staff into disrepute and serves no useful purpose. "We are very happy to listen through all of the other mechanisms for communication in the trust, such as the partnership forum, our newsletter and even an anonymous section on our own intranet. We have numerous ways of people communicating with us.

"We have had a new management team in place since November. We appreciate that some of the issues are long-standing and we want to do everything we can to involve our staff in the future. We appreciate that during a period of change and increasing demand from the public we fully understand why our staff are frustrated because it's so busy for them.

"However, patients come first and we will do what we can to provide a professional and prompt response within the resources and budget we have available.

"We believe it's a very small number of staff responsible for the blog and that most of our staff are professional and committed individuals who do a fantastic job and it's very concerning that a few feel the need to air their concerns on a blog rather than discuss them with us."