ALMOST a thousand 999 calls by people in urgent need of an ambulance are being left unanswered monthly by the under-pressure South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb), new figures have revealed.

According to NHS England data, 984 emergency calls were ‘abandoned before being answered’ by SECAmb this March - a four-fold (358 per cent) increase on the 215 calls left to ring out just a year earlier in April 2015.

The trend is reflected nationally, with the number of 999 calls left unanswered by all 11 ambulance services in the UK jumping up from 3,282 to 11,028 over the same period (a 236 per cent increase).

However, the data ranks SECAmb, which covers Surrey, Sussex, parts of North East Hampshire and Kent, among the four most over-stretched ambulance services in the country.

According to NHS England, over the past year SECAmb has experienced a 30 per cent increase in its monthly number of 999 calls, from 48,795 in April 2015 to 63,546 in March 2016, again outstripping the national average increase of 22 per cent.

And as the service struggles to cope with this rising demand, SECAmb crews attended only 62 per cent of ‘Category A Red 1’ calls - the most time critical cases, where patients are not breathing or do not have a pulse - within the eight-minute target in March.

This compares to 76 per cent in April last year, and falls well short of the 75 per cent standard set by NHS England.

SECAmb crews also arrived at just half (50 per cent) of ‘Category A Red 2’ - still serious cases, but less immediately time critical, such as strokes or fits - within eight minutes in March, compared to 75 per cent a year earlier.

Responding, Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients’ Association, said the figures demonstrate the ambulance service nationally is performing the worst it has since records began in 2012.

She said: “Patients are at their most vulnerable when they have to resort to calling an ambulance for assistance. At the very least, they have the right to expect to have their calls for help responded to.

“Ambulance call-out targets are in place for a reason: in an emergency, quick action is vital. For patients who have suffered a heart attack or a stroke, every second counts, as delays in receiving emergency treatment can mean the difference between life and death.

“It is therefore unacceptable for ambulance targets to be missed, and action must be taken to ensure that this vital service receives the investment and proper management that it needs.”

SECAmb has struggled to cope with increasing demand for a number of years. However, the problem has become more acute in the first half of this year and the trust is again reminding people to call 999 only in the event of a serious emergency.

Responding to the NHS England figures, a SECAmb spokesperson said: “We are committed to improving our current call handling performance. This involves a new recruitment campaign to fill vacancies in our emergency operations centres.

“Increasing demand also has a major impact on our performance. The figures should be viewed in the context of a 14 per cent increase in our calls in the first three months of this year and an 18 per cent increase in March alone.

“We would like to take this opportunity to remind people that 999 should only be called in the event of a serious emergency and that everyone should make use of all the alternatives available to them when not facing an emergency.”

SECAmb has trialled several initiatives to reduce the pressure on its crews, including most recently a scheme to train Surrey’s firefighters to respond to more life-threatening medical emergencies.

However, SECAmb’s chief executive Paul Sutton left his job this week in the wake of a disastrous three-month pilot project that delayed emergency crew response times by an extra 10 minutes.

The trial scheme was run from December 2014 to February 2015 in response to the high pressures SECAmb was facing last winter, and effectively changed how SECAmb handled some NHS 111 calls which were transferred to the 999 emergency system to give itself additional time to deal with more urgent calls.

This resulted in up to 20,000 patients, including those with life-threatening problems such as strokes and fits, having to wait twice as long for emergency treatment, and was launched without the knowledge of NHS 111 call staff, board non-executives, the medical director or local commissioners of services.

A review by NHS watchdog Monitor, published last November, found that SECAmb failed to give sufficient consideration to the impact on patient safety or fully inform the trust board.

The watchdog also criticised how the trust is being run and how decisions are being taken, adding: “The CEO [Mr Sutton] made the ultimate decision to proceed with the pilot and played a critical leadership role throughout.”

Defending the pilot last November, Mr Sutton said the project was designed to enable ambulance crews to respond promptly to the most seriously ill patients.

However, he recognised that it was not well implemented and the right processes were not followed, and following months of speculation SECAmb confirmed this week that Mr Sutton, who had been on an leave of absence from the trust, has now left permanently “to pursue other interests”.

A SECAmb spokesman said: “The trust would like to thank Paul for his contribution to the developments and achievements of the trust over the past 10 years. The process for finding a permanent replacement will start immediately and will be subject to further announcements as appropriate.”