I was a bit worried that a story we ran last week about the reaction to the Great Western Ambulance Service's dismal health rating was a bit too soft on the trust.

The story was angled all around the chief executive Tim Lynch's reponse to the rating, rather than the findings of ratings assessment.

But in fact the service's inistence that its emergency cover is getting better only served to prompt a frustrated worker to write to us with a damning vision of what the reality is for staff now that they are struggling with a new computer system.

The letter tells how the dispatch room in Devizes now has to rely on control room staff in Bristol for information when a 999 call comes in. I wonder how many people realise when they call for an ambulance in Wiltshire the person at the other end is now in Avon?

They then relay the need for an ambulance back to Devizes, where the dispatch room receives the information via computer.

But the new Bristol system does not always provide full addresses and will come across saying the call is "in the vicinty of".

Vital minutes are lost while the dispatchers call Bristol's control centre asking for more information.

The writer says they have seen dispatchers almost reduced to tears of frustration.

The new system also fails to flag up addresses that have proven to be dangerous for ambulance staff in the past, as the old one did.

It seems to me the system is putting the lives of the ambulance staff at risk, as well as those of the patients.

Already this week we have heard about the death of a patient in Amesbury.

An inquiry is under way but it seems the patient was kept waiting for an ambulance to come from elsewhere in the county while a crew sat in readiness in Amesbury's own station because the computer system had failed to alert dispatch staff the Amesbury crew had finished with their previous call.

I'm looking forward to seeing the service's response. No doubt, as one of our readers commented on the story, the service management will be found blameless by the inquiry.