A WILTSHIRE paramedic has written to the Gazette attacking ambulance trust bosses' policy of ignoring rural areas to concentrating on meeting response targets in town centres.

The paramedic, who has asked his name be withheld to protect his job, wrote after the Gazette reported the Great Western Ambulance NHS Trust's new policy last week.

The Great Western Ambulance Service admitted that it does not attempt to reach the national target of sending an ambulance within eight minutes to life threatening calls in rural areas 75 per cent of the time, instead it aims to achieve a 60 per cent rate.

And in order to meet an overall 75 per cent target it aims to achieve 85 per cent in urban areas. In semi-urban areas - that is 24 per cent of Wiltshire - the service aims to achieve a 75 per cent target.

The paramedic wrote: I find that, like a lot of colleagues, I have lost confidence in the executive board of the Great Western Ambulance Service NHS Trust in fulfilling its obligation to staff and the public. Your article is correct in saying that the rural communities of Wiltshire (and indeed Avon and Gloucester-shire) are now receiving a poor emergency ambulance service.

The amalgamation of Wiltshire, Avon and Gloucestershire into one ambulance trust has been a disaster, with no clear sense of direction, no cohesion, a lack of communication and the trust board firmly fixed on achieving response targets to the detriment of rural areas.'' The paramedic's dismay was echoed by former Wiltshire Chief Fire Officer John Craig, who also wrote to the Gazette.

He wrote: When it was first mooted that Wiltshire Ambulance Service would be combined with two others to create the Great Western Ambulance Service, I suspected that the large cities and towns would benefit, and those of us living in rural parts would experience a deterioration in ambulance cover. I have been proved right.'' This week a member of the trust's control room staff in Devizes said staff in are unhappy at the new policy.

The controller said: "Everywhere outside an urban area is considered to be an acceptable loss in the figures. Places like Swindon, Salisbury, Trowbridge and Bath are examples of places where the management look to meet the majority of the response times.

"Places like Westbury, Melksham, Devizes and Chippenham are also pretty well covered. We are pointed towards hitting the response times in bigger places rather than villages. It's not patient care and staff don't agree with it.

Wiltshire is an extremely rural county and you will never get an ambulance response within eight minutes at some of the villages. Funding is not good. We don't have a great deal of front line ambulances as it is and our job is to make the best out of what we have got.

"The public get frustrated and the controllers and the ambulance crews are equally frustrated."