A SHARP rise in calls has been blamed by the county's ambulance service for its failure to hit the Government's new eight-minute response time.

The target to reach 75 per cent of all emergency 999 calls within the time limit was introduced in March.

It was revealed at this week's board meeting that Hereford and Worcester Ambulance Trust achieved 74.3 per cent - missing the target by just six calls.

An increase in both emergency and urgent calls - which topped more than 51,000 for the first time ever during the past year - was the reason given for missing the new standard.

"Despite a gallant effort by staff to try and hit the target we missed it by those six calls," said Steve McGuinness, director of operations who stressed they had dealt with more than 3,000 calls in March.

"During the past eight months we have seen a 25 per cent improvement so we believe we are on target to hit the standard.

"However, we are seeing an overall increase in calls to the service with emergency calls up during the past year by 4.26 per cent and urgent calls up by 6.2 per cent. We can never tell when those swings in demand will come. For example, in July we had 3,200 calls and this month is not historically busy."

He said the extra workload was mainly due to the ageing population.

"I'm pleased people still call us but there are some who dial too quickly when they could use other services like NHS Direct and there are others who leave it too long and some older people who still think they have to pay for an ambulance," Mr McGuinness added.

Chairman Paul Leopold said the demand on the service was "relentless" and would continue to be in the future.

"I think we have also become more accessible to people due to mobile phones and a lessening in the reluctance to call us as they know the service is effective."