About 200 Alston Moor residents staged a peaceful protest last night which sent a clear message to the North West Ambulance Service – “hands off our ambulance”.
The gathering took place ahead of a parish council meeting held at Alston town hall at which representatives from the ambulance service outlined their rationale for plans to axe the town’s ambulance which is manned by emergency medical technicians (EMTs).
As work is set to begin this week on replacing a section of the town’s iconic cobbles, residents, both young and old, were able to spread themselves out right across the closed road with banners, signs and placards in hand.
Inside, Ged Blezard, director of operations for NWAS, told parish councillors the aim of the proposal was to create a sustainable model for emergency service provision on the Moor with the recruitment of additional community first responders with enhanced skills.
Head of service for Lancashire and Cumbria, Gene Quinn, said: “I can sense and clearly see the sense of concern that the community has about what is being discussed and what is being proposed.”
Mr Quinn said they stated having discussions a number of years back about the current EMT model which is in existence to cover Alston Moor.
“While it was sustainable at the time we have got to a point over the last couple of years where those numbers of (EMTs) have dropped from 18 to six people.
“With six people covering the ambulance it means there are some operational gaps,” said Mr Quinn.
What NWAS want to do is bring something else in which was going to “enhance the provision across Alston Moor” and provide a safer response for the community, parish councillors were told.
A statement from the group after the meeting said: “The chair of the parish council, Norman English, forced clarification of the fact that the Clinical Commissioning Group, who actually fund the ambulance, has no intention of removing funding; and that there is no shortage of ambulances and hence no need to take ours for some other use.
“I think we were all shocked by the remark from Ged Blezard of NWAS that it was pointless stocking the ambulance with all the drugs as well as equipment when some things were rarely needed.
“As parish councillor Elaine Grew pointed out, if one person’s life is saved, it is of no consequence whether that’s once in three years.
“Elaine Grew also raised the fact that it is ludicrous to expect a Community First Responder (CFR) to keep going with cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for two hours, waiting for a paramedic ambulance from somewhere to arrive – as a nurse, they would only ever perform CPR for two minutes at a time, taking turns to ensure someone could be kept alive.
“Alina Williams, one of the CFRs, said that without the security of knowing our local ambulance would arrive within ten minutes, she was not at all sure she would be willing to continue as a CFR.”
