EMERGENCY ambulance response time targets remain unrealistic, because of Pembrokeshire’s rural geography - a spokesman for the Wales Ambulance Service (WAST) has said.

Dorian James, WAST’s Pembrokeshire locality manager, has again criticised the Welsh Government’s eight-minute target for ‘red’ category calls – those that are deemed immediately life-threatening.

Speaking at a meeting of Hywel Dda Health Board’s Community Health Council (CHC) on Thursday (January 14) Mr James said changes brought in last October to how emergency calls were categorised meant fewer calls were now classed as ‘immediately life-threatening’.

While this meant ambulances were dealing with fewer ‘red’ calls overall, Pembrokeshire’s rurality meant paramedics were still struggling to make the eight-minute target.

And being unable to meet the targeted time for priority calls was skewing the figures, and painting Pembrokeshire in a bad light, said Mr James.

Giving an example, Mr James said: “We’re now only getting one or two life-threatening calls a day, but if one of those is in Llanfyrnach or somewhere, in the middle of the three counties, that now affects our figures dramatically as it’s a bigger percentage of the total.

“So in terms of speed, we now look like one of the worst. But in terms of clinical outcomes, we’re very good.

“From a family’s perspective that’s what matters – we succeeded in saving their loved one - but based on the targets we’re failing.”

Mr James said targets needed to change, so that ‘complete focus’ was on clinical outcomes, and not response times.

“It’s demoralising for the crews working really hard,” he said. “All we see in the press is that we’re failing to meet our targets.”

“Because of our geography, we just can’t get in there in eight minutes.”

Alyson Thomas, chief officer for Hywel Dda CHC, said: “Patients have never just judged the service on response times.”

Board member Dennis Evans said the problem was “the Assembly Members in Cardiff” and that it was “clear targets need to be changed”.

For October 2015, under 5 per cent of calls were classed a ‘red’ within Hywel Dda Health Board, while 67.7 per cent were classed as ‘amber’ – serious but not immediately life-threatening - and 46.4 per cent as ‘green’ – non-urgent.