David Ruffley MP questioned the performance of the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust following a meeting with Monitor on 17 October. Monitor is the independent regulator for NHS trusts seeking Foundation status.

“This meeting with Monitor prompted me to do research into the performance of the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust.

The East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust performed the second worst of all of the trusts in England for both Category A call targets. The East of England came eleventh out of twelve ambulance trusts. Only the East Midlands Ambulance Trust has a worse track record when responding to emergency calls.

The East of England Ambulance Trust was one of only 2 trusts in England that failed to meet their target to respond to 95% of calls within 19 minutes (East of England and East Midlands). For 5.1% of calls, patients with life threatening conditions waited over 19 minutes for an ambulance to arrive.

I will be meeting the Chief Executive of the Trust next month to ask whether this is due to funding cuts or other reasons”