Councillors have given their unanimous backing to a motion calling on the North West Ambulance Service to improve the service provided in West Craven.
Thursday night’s full Pendle Council meeting heard Coun. Ken Hartley that the service had provided statistics to the council’s West Craven Committee which showed it had failed to meet the target response time to emergency calls of eight minutes on 34 out of 53 occasions in November last year.
He spoke to a motion which had been put forward by his colleague Coun. Lindsay Gaskell, who was unable to be present, which expressed concern that a well populated pasrt of Pendle which had high numbers of people travelling there for work had such poor emergency response figures.
“If the ambulance is meeting response times to 85% of calls in Pendle as a whole, it is extremely worrying. West Craven is paying the penalty for being on the outskirts of Pendle which is on the outskirts of Lancashire,” said Coun. Hartley.
“Figures show that you are more likely to die prematurely if you live in the north than if you live in the south and of 150 regions analysed in the country for response times, Lancashire was 103rd.”
Coun. David Whipp supported the motion and said West Craven was getting a “lousy” service.
“It’s time it was improved,” he said.
Councillors gave the motion their full backing and have asked Chief Executive Stephen Barnes to write to the relevant authorities