AMBULANCE chiefs have admitted that people living in rural areas of Wiltshire cannot expect to receive an ambulance within the national target time.

Steve West, director of operations at the Great Western Ambulance Service, made the admission at a meeting of the newly formed joint overview and scrutiny committee last Friday held at Swindon Borough Council's offices.

The Great Western Ambulance Service, which serves Wiltshire, Avon and Gloucestershire, has struggled to consistently meet the national target of sending an ambulance to life threatening calls within eight minutes 75 per cent of the time, although Mr West said recent performance showed this target was being met on average.

But he agreed that response times in rural areas were not as good.

He said: "We aim to achieve 60 per cent of life threatening calls in rural communities, we are not going to get 75 per cent."

Mr West said a rural area was defined as a place where the ambulance service received one life threatening 999 call every two to three days.

He said volunteers, called community first responders, who are trained to use defibrillators were a key part of the ambulance service's response in rural areas.

In addition to rural areas the service defines places as semi-urban and urban.

Mr West said 24 per cent of Wiltshire is semi-urban, the highest proportion out of the three counties that the service serves. A semi-urban area is defined as an area where two to four life threatening 999 calls are received a day.

Following the meeting on Friday the Gazette asked the ambulance service for examples of rural areas, semi-urban and urban areas in Wiltshire but has not received a response.

All Cannings near Devizes is a rural area which has community first responders.

Parish council chairman Tim Daw said: "By saying they aim to achieve a 60 per cent response in rural areas is an admission by the ambulance service that it is failing rural populations."

Bromham Parish Council chairman Peter Paget said: "We don't want to settle for a 60 per cent response rate, I would like to see the ambulance service improve upon that."

Rowde Parish Council chairman Janet Giles said: "Sixty per cent is not good enough. Why should rural areas be deprived? If they can't get an ambulance to a rural area in eight minutes why don't they reconsider using paramedics on motorbikes?"

Mr West said the ambulance service had improved performance times by restructuring ambulance staff so they worked in smaller teams of 11 and organised their own rotas, replacing three different computer systems with one and using more cars staffed by a single paramedic.

Consequently, Mr West said in Wiltshire performance as a whole had improved from 60 per cent last year to around 75 per cent. In Swindon the performance was 90 per cent.

The Great Western Ambulance Service was formed in April 2006 following the merger of Wiltshire, Avon and Gloucestershire ambulance services.

Before the merger Mr West said all three ambulance services were "failing organisations."