SWANAGE Town councillor Debby Monkhouse says she, and others, still have their doubts about the reasons for a review into the town’s ambulance car service.

She says that with almost 1,000 call outs to Swanage alone each year, many of which have resulted in saved lives, there are no grounds for a second look.

More than 7,500 people have now signed a petition to save the ambulance car, which Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group says it intends to review – along with the level of double-crewed ambulances for the Purbeck area.

The CCG said recently that there were "no plans" for the service.

Cllr Monkhouse said: “Once A&E, maternity and specialist children’s care go from Poole, Swanage will be approaching 30 miles from emergency hospital care, with much of the journey on congested single track roads, particularly at holiday times.

"The paramedic car attends 1,875 Purbeck call outs each year, over half of which are category 1-3 emergencies, the most serious, where there is risk to life or of permanent disability.

"The majority of these emergencies centre around Swanage, which clocks up more overall use, more category 1 use, and more category 1-3 use than the rest of Purbeck put together.”

Cllr Monkhouse said it was not clear why Swanage-based resources were being reviewed as the CCG told Dorset Council health scrutiny committee in 2018 that the loss of A&E, maternity and children’s care from Poole would mean that Swanage Ambulance resources would be fully maintained, or increased.

Among the options said to be open for consideration is transferring the money currently spent on the paramedic car to turn a 10 hour ambulance service into a 24/7 one.

Cllr Monkhouse says that the 10-hour ambulance is the second Wareham Ambulance, so if the proposal went ahead it would mean swapping the 24 hour Swanage based paramedic car for an extra 14 hours on a resource located ten miles away at Wareham.

“Even if we assume that ambulance is at the Wareham base when the call goes out from Swanage for help, this is too far away for the ambulance trust to get here within the eight minute target response time for a category 1, imminent danger of death call, to give the best chance of saving life,” she said.

When not used for emergency work the car supports the work of GPs which, unlike ambulances, means it is always in the area.

“Dorset CCG’s presentation at health scrutiny committee echoed what South Dorset MP Richard Drax had reported, in that it seemed designed to support the withdrawal of the car and its replacement with extra ambulance hours," said Cllr Monkhouse.

"It focused on the benefits of ambulances, but did not address the long waits for these to come to Swanage.

“The ambulance trust has previously reported that the average time between a Swanage category 1 imminent danger of death call to the Trust, to the arrival of the patient at Poole Hospital, over a 13 month period, was one hour 43 minutes. Nor did the presentation mention that the paramedic car is based in Swanage, that it is ‘tethered’ to base in a way no ambulance can be, that it responds faster, how well used it is, nor that the majority of it’s work is in Swanage, with more than half its work serious emergencies.

“We cannot afford to lose this Swanage based 24/7 emergency service – it is a matter of life and death. We need our paramedic car.”