Ambulance response targets in Shropshire have been met only once in 10 months, a report to county health chiefs has revealed.

Targets state that 75 per cent of Category A emergency calls – defined as immediately life threatening – should receive a response at the scene of the incident within eight minutes.

But figures show that in the Shropshire County Primary Care Trust area that was not met until January, when the rate was 75.2 per cent. And it was the first time that the target had been hit since April last year.

In previous months the figure has been as low as 61.3 per cent and the average is 71 per cent.

The West Midlands Ambulance Service has struggled for some time to meet the target in rural Shropshire and the issue has been highlighted on a number of occasions by the primary care trust board.

Ambulance service spokesman Chris Kowalik said today that targets would always be “very challenging” in a large and relatively sparsely populated area like Shropshire.

He said there were fewer calls compared to more urban areas and therefore a call not responded to within the target time threw the figures out “disproportionately”.

To try to improve the situation, the service is continually looking for ambulance standby points in suitable locations.

Mr Kowalik said the service also had a department which monitored demand on a hourly basis to try to ensure that it had the “right number of resources in the right area” to meet the peaks and troughs in demand.

The report to health bosses says a number of “management actions” are taking place to try to improve performance.

The report being presented to the primary care trust board next Tuesday also shows that the Category B calls target has only been hit once since April.

This standard says that 95 per cent of calls defined as serious, but not immediately life-threatening, must receive a response at the scene of the incident within 19 minutes.

In January the ambulance service reached a level of 95.5 per cent but the figure has been as low as 88.7 per cent.

By Health Correspondent Dave Morris