The South West’s ambulance service is still failing to get to the most critically ill patients in good time.

For yet another month the service failed to hit targets for reaching Category 1 (C1) incidents – injured people at the highest risk.

When asked for a response, the service produced a statement almost identical to the one it released after last month’s poor performance figures.

National targets say paramedics should get to C1 patients within seven minutes.

And although improving on its response times in March, figures recently released by NHS England for April show South West paramedics are still taking an average of more than eight minutes to reach C1 patients.

The South West service is among the worst in the country for C1 response times, with only the east midlands and north west services posting worse results.

All ambulance services are struggling to keep up after the target for reaching critical patients was reduced from eight to seven minutes.

The South West service was failing to hit even the eight minute target before it was lowered.

A service spokesman said: “South Western Ambulance Service has been working exceptionally hard to improve its performance.

“We are continuing to demonstrate a week-on-week improvement in our response times for our most critical and seriously ill patients, and we have robust plans in place to continue this improvement across all categories of patients.

“We will continue to work with our strategic partners to negotiate further resources to enable us to deliver the highest quality response to patients.”

The statement is almost identical to that which it released last month.

Only four ambulance services hit the seven minute target in April, when the average response time for C1 cases across thge country was 7 minutes 38 seconds.

For Category 2 incidents – those not deemed immedietly life-threatening – the South West service is failing just as badly. It did not hit the 18 minute target from December last year to April this year.

Although failing to hit its target in April, the latest time for which figures are available, it did improve on its performance in previous months, when it was sometimes taking more than 30 minutes to reach C2 cases.

Sarah Ambe, manager at Healthwatch Bristol, the city’s health watchdog, said: “Healthwatch are aware of South West Ambulance Service Trust’s (SWAST) response times, and therefore has responded with a public survey.

“We invite members of the public who have used the South West Ambulance Service Trust service to complete this online  https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/73C67VN in order to find out more.  

“This is not restricted to urgent care/blue light response times, but also the other non-urgent services provided by SWAST. 

“Upon analysis of our findings, we will be happy to share the response with the public and our stakeholders and providers, including SWAST who we regularly keep in contact with.”

The ambulance service covers Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and the former Avon area, including Bristol and Bath.