Wiltshire Council’s health overview and scrutiny committee is writing to the Great Western Ambulance Service (GWAS) expressing concern at its performance.

During 2008/9 in Wiltshire, GWAS achieved a 58 per cent response to Category A calls (life threatening) within eight minutes. The national target is 75 per cent.

GWAS also serves Gloucestershire and Avon and the overall figure for all three areas was 68.4 per cent.

GWAS has a new chief executive, David Whiting, who arrived last month and he has pledged the service will achieve the national targets on response times.

At a meeting of Wiltshire Council’s health overview and scrutiny committee, Peter Biggs, chairman of the health and social care watchdog Wiltshire Involvement Network, said: “Results for Wiltshire are unacceptable. It’s no good GWAS saying it’s a large rural county, I know that. The emergency services need a strategy in attempting to reach the national target.”

Alison Knowles, director of corporate affairs and communications at NHS Wiltshire which provides funding to GWAS, said: “The results are unacceptable and the PCT have been very clear with GWAS about that and is seeking improvements in the commissioning process.”

Keith Scott, locality director for Wiltshire at GWAS, said they had seen significant improvements in recent weeks.

In April, GWAS reached 74.6 per cent of Category A incidents within eight minutes across the region, despite responding to almost 10 per cent more emergency calls than the same time last year.

In Wiltshire for this month to date GWAS said it was reaching 74.9 per cent of those life-threatening calls.

Mr Scott said: Getting to all incidents faster, wherever they are, is key to delivering the highest levels of patient care, which is our primary focus.

“The improvements in our service are due to the continuing hard work and commitment to excellence of our staff.”

He said more staff in the Emergency Operations Centres answering 999 calls and more operational crews able to reach patients had led to the improvements.