Hoax 999 emergency calls cost £6.5 MILLION in waste over the last five years

Idiots have cost the ambulance service more than £6.5million in the past five years.

They have also put many lives at risk with 41,187 fake calls.

And the NHS money they wasted could have employed nearly 50 nurses in that time.

Rachel Harrison, of the GMB union, said: “Paramedics and ambulance workers are close to collapse with demand doubling during the past ten years.

“The last thing they need are tens of thousands of hoax calls making a tough job tougher.”

Some call centres reported repeat offenders who would constantly call up (POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

There have already been 1,927 calls so far this year.

Dispatching an ambulance costs £155 – and an air ambulance £1,700.

One hoax call cost The East Midlands Ambulance Service £2,465 when a child claimed a girl had been killed by a car.

An air ambulance, paramedic, fast response vehicle and two ambulances went to the scene but there was nothing there.

Hoax calls make the job of response teams even harder (Adam Hughes)

In 2018, Michael Gibson, 50, from Brighton, was jailed for 16 months for making hundreds of bogus 999 calls.

Call centres said he would call 50 times per shift.

Ten ambulance services responded to a Freedom of Information Request. But South Central Ambulance Service does not record hoax calls so the true number is much higher.

Yorkshire received the most hoax calls since 2017 at 8,445.