Haverhill Town Council expresses hope that town’s ambulance provision will take a turn for the better

Optimism has been sounded that Haverhill’s ‘unacceptable’ ambulance provision could take a turn for the better over the next few months.

The renewed positivity was expressed at last Monday’s full Haverhill Town Council meeting, where councillors discussed a meeting that took place on November 21 between its Ambulance Subgroup and representatives of EEAST (East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust), including CEO Neill Moloney.

Also in attendance was Ed Garrett, the chief executive of the NHS Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board (ICB).

The meeting came four weeks after the Haverhill Echo revealed that research by town councillors Alan Stinchcombe and Tony Brown showed that Cambridge’s average C1 (life-threatening situations) response time was 7.3 minutes, very close to the national target of seven minutes, but Haverhill’s was 14.7 minutes, double that of Cambridge’s.

At the meeting last week, councillors learned that EEAST had moved Haverhill to level 1 on the System Status Plan for south Cambridgeshire, the priority list of locations for relocating any free ambulances.

Haverhill sits in EEAST’s south Cambridgeshire operational group and ambulances starting their shifts in Haverhill are usually dispatched towards Cambridge.

The change to level 1 means that should an ambulance normally stationed at Haverhill become free, it will head back to the town and await the next call rather than be expected to wait elsewhere.

At Monday’s meeting, Cllr Brown said: “I came away from that meeting feeling a lot happier than I have in other meetings.”

Cllr Mary Martin pointed out that the town council has a long history of fighting to improve the ambulance provision in Haverhill, going back more than 25 years.

While sceptical that things will improve, she added: “We have to keep their feet to the fire. We have to keep the pressure on.”

Cllr Lora Miller-Jones said: “I feel that in previous times the ambulance service has come and they’ve given us a lot of attitude and basically said there’s nothing that we can do.

“This did feel different. They gave us a lot of concrete things that they are doing.”

Cllr Miller-Jones added: “There are definitely a lot of question marks but I would say it’s not the same as previous times (when town council representatives met with EEAST) when we have been fobbed off.

“They do very much actually seem to be interested in, for the first time, taking us seriously.”

Cllr Stinchcombe expressed doubt that being moved up to level 1 would necessarily result in an ambulance spending more time in Haverhill, fearing that an ambulance could get an emergency call while en-route to the town and easily be diverted away.

Cllr David Smith, the mayor of Haverhill, said: “There was more positive undertones at the meeting and we have now got to commit. It’s down to use to make sure that we make them beholden to that, as Cllr Martin said, to hold their feet to the fire.”

A meeting is due to take place between town council representatives and EEAST in February to review what impact the change has made to the C1 response times for Haverhill.