An extra 240 frontline staff will be recruited by South Western Ambulance Service after bosses secured £12million from the Government to meet new response targets.
Government-set targets changed last year with an ambulance now expected to be on the scene of a life-threatening call-out, known as Category 1, within seven minutes.
Service ambulances must, on average, also arrive at an emergency Category 2 callout within 18 minutes, the targets state.
Bosses, who claimed they did not have the resources to meet the target, have now been told they will receive £8 million in this financial year and £4 million in the next year to increase resources.
This will result in the recruitment of more than 240 “frontline operational staff”. Money will also be spent on new ambulance vehicles.
A spokesman for the trust would not provide an interview as staff were currently being briefed on the programme.
However, in papers to last week’s trust meeting, a report prepared by performance manager Paul Quick said: “Our People Plan will see an increase of more than 240 frontline operational staff over the two-year period and will require investment and changes to the trust estate to accommodate these increases.”
It said work was being done to see where the new staff should go.
Although the trust met the Category 1 average seven-minute ambulance response time target for the region in April, it was missed in Bath and North East Somerset, Somerset and Wiltshire.
For Category 2 responses, the service failed to meet the 18-minute target. In Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, the mean response time was 30min.
As part of the business case for the extra funding from Government, the trust turned to an external research company which deemed that there was an £18 million funding gap between the existing resources and the level required to deliver target response times.
The report prepared by Mr Quick said the impact of the new staff would not be immediate.
It said: “Due to the timeline involved in delivering the additional operational staff on the road the trust is not anticipating significant improvements in response times until the latter part of 2019/20, with lead clinician numbers not expected to show stepped improvements until quarter three of 2019/20 with further improvements in quarter four of 2019/20.”
The extra funding comes at a time when the service faces a challenge recruiting qualified paramedics from the UK.
Despite lowering its target to 43 for 2018/19, it recruited 29.
As a result, bosses are now turning to other countries, such as New Zealand with 17 people arriving to work at the trust in 2018/19.
The service currently has 4,489 staff.
