CONCERNS over ambulance response times have been highlighted during proposals by the police and crime commissioner to take on governance of the fire service.

Response times to areas of Craven, and particularly in very rural areas had become 'ridiculously slow' said Craven District Council leader, Richard Foster.

Cllr Foster said the amount of time road ambulances took to respond to emergencies had always been poor, but had recently got worse, and suggested making use of retained fire fighters.

"I've known people especially in the dales with broken bones who have had to wait for an hour or more for an ambulance," he said.

Cllr Foster said he would favour the use of firefighters as paramedics, as was currently being tested out in parts of the county.

"I know fire fighters up in the dales who don't have a lot of call outs who would be willing to do it," he said.

Fellow district councillor, Andy Solloway, who is also on North Yorkshire County Council, said response times had been discussed at area committee but that requests to the Yorkshire Ambulance Service to attend one of its meetings had so far not been successful.

"In a recent incident involving someone I knew who was injured out in the Dales, the call to the ambulance itself was put on hold, before they had even described the situation," he said.

He added he had also been a marshal at an event near Burnsall where the air ambulance had arrived for an emergency well before the road ambulance, even though the event was on a reasonable B road.

Craven has come out against single governance of the fire service proposed by PCC Julia Mulligan and has instead sided with the fire authority, which proposes Mrs Mulligan become its 14th member, with full voting rights.

During scrutiny of both sides, several councillors raised issues about the ambulance service and suggested all three emergency services work more closely together.

Cllr Foster, said he thought had Mrs Mulligan proposed single governance of all three emergency services she would have received more support. Mrs Mulligan told councillors closer working with the ambulance service was to be encouraged, but complicated because it covered the whole of Yorkshire, unlike the other two services.

Cllr Solloway said "It is my view that the PCC should have a strong handle on this given that she said she had and was still wanting to have a more co-operative working between all the blue light services. It seems that the government have not helped but also the fact that health and ambulance services have different boundaries than the police and fire services makes that difficult. Our Craven Area Committee have asked the management of the ambulance service to come and answer for their response times and so far it hasn't happened. I'd like our PCC to be able to challenge them on this too."

John McSorley, Head of Emergency Operations (Airedale, Bradford, Leeds and Craven) at Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust, said:

“We aim to reach all of our patients as quickly as possible but rural parts of our region, like the Craven district, where populations are sparsely dispersed do present particular challenges for all emergency services.We continue to work hard to improve our response times, but it is important to remember that they are not the only measure of the care we provide and we remain focused on delivering safe and high quality services to the people of Yorkshire.”