'Staggering' - Heart attack and stroke victims in Banbury face nearly an hour's wait for an ambulance, says Labour

Cllr Sean Woodcock was responding to new figures which reveal category 2 (emergencies including heart attacks and strokes) patients are waiting an average of 54.02 minutes for an ambulance in Banbury.

“These figures are staggering. After 13 years of Conservative rule our NHS faces the worst crisis in its history. The terrifying truth is that patients in an emergency in Cherwell can no longer be sure the NHS will be there for them,” he said.

“The longer the Tories are in power, the longer patients will wait for care - but Labour has a plan to get our health service back on its feet. We would bring about one of the biggest NHS workforce expansions in its history - funded by abolishing the unfair non-dom status for the super rich.”

Mark Ainsworth, Director of Operations at South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SCAS), said: “Increased pressures on ambulance services reflect the difficulties facing the whole health and social care system, particularly at busy hospitals where challenges handing over patients impacts the availability of our crews. Due to this, some patients are unfortunately having to wait longer for an ambulance response than the nationally set targets.

“While performance at SCAS for Category 2 calls remains the third quickest of all English ambulance trusts at 54 minutes and significantly below the average response time in England for December of just under 93 minutes, this is in the context of all ambulance services missing all targets which demonstrates the scale of the issues being faced nationwide.

“We continue to work extremely hard within our own service and with our partners to provide as much resilience in the system as we can to limit delays and ask the public to continue to help us manage the pressures we are under by only calling 999 for life-threatening emergencies and using 111 online in the first instance for urgent medical advice where appropriate to do so.”

The latest ambulance waiting time figures can be found here.

In South Central the average category 2 wait is 54.02 minutes. The target is 18 minutes. Category 2 includes emergencies such as heart attacks and strokes.