THE life-saving County Air Ambulance will be in the skies for longer thanks to the dedication of fund-raisers.

West Midlands Ambulance Service has announced £600,000 of improvements to its service across 11 counties, including Worcestershire, and an area of 8,000 square miles.

The trust board has given the go-ahead for detailed work to begin on increasing the number of flying hours and increasing the skills of the staff who fly on them.

Money will be spent on:

* Increasing the flying hours for the aircraft based at Strensham, just outside Worcester, and Cosford, near Wolverhampton. Cosford will go from 10 hours a day to 16. Strensham will go from 10 to 12.

* Placing a specialist trauma doctor on board the Cosford helicopter at all times. In the long-term it is intended to put a doctor on the Strensham helicopter.

* Training the paramedics in critical care.

* More training for the people who dispatch the helicopter, who are based at the emergency operations centre in Brierley Hill.

Suzie Bourne, of St John's in Worcester, whose life was saved by the County Air Ambulance after a car crash in 1998, said it was great news.

Mrs Bourne suffered serious head, pelvic and leg injuries in the accident on the A44 in Stoulton, when her Fiesta hit a Toyota Carina travelling in the opposite direction before colliding head-on with a Peugeot Boxer van.

It took half-an-hour for firefighters to cut her out of the wreckage but thanks to the air ambulance, she was at Selly Oak hospital within the hour. "If they hadn't been flying when I needed them then my quality of life would have been significantly less than I have now - I could have even died," she said. "The longer they can be airborne the better."

Anthony Marsh, West Midlands Ambulance Service Trust chief executive, said the improvements were possible thanks to the efforts of the people who raise more than £3 million a year for the service.

"These helicopters would not fly were it not for the enormous generosity of the people of the West Midlands," he said.