A DAMNING indictment of the way the Welsh Ambulance Service (WAS) is run is extremely worrying, says Preseli Pembrokeshire AM Paul Davies.

The former head of the WAS, Roger Thane, says that people are dying because of problems in getting ambulances to them. When Mr Thane quit in 2006 he estimated that up to 500 people a year were dying because of inadequacies in the ambulance service.

"This was an extremely worrying figure but the awful thing is that Mr Thayne has not seen improvements in key areas since he left," said Mr Davies.

In May the Western Telegraph reported the inquest of 83 year‐old Mary Stockhall who died at her residential home near Tenby.

Care home staff called three times for an ambulance but it took almost 90 minutes for one to reach her from Llandeilo. All three of Pembrokeshire's ambulances were stuck waiting outside hospitals in Llanelli and Carmarthen. The coroner recorded a verdict of death from natural causes but told her family that her death was; "perhaps avoidable in other circumstances."

Mr Thayne undertook a progress report on the WAS for a BBC programme and found that response times have failed to improve since 2006 and that four out of ten people still have to wait too long for an ambulance.

"It is shocking to think that despite Mr Thayne's warnings in 2006, little seems to have changed in our ambulance service and lives are still being put at risk," said Mr Davies.

"The Welsh Assembly Government promised to make changes but how can they expect things to improve when they have asked the ambulance service to make millions of pounds worth of efficiency savings?"