Norfolk's rural characteristics have been blamed for the county's ambulance waits being longer than anywhere else in the region.

Figures from the East of England Ambulance Service Trust have shown that Norfolk is the only county it serves where waits for the most urgent calls are longer than 10 minutes.

On average, the people in life-threatening conditions wait 10 minutes and 36 seconds for an ambulance - more than a minute longer than the trust's average (nine minutes 11 seconds).

The trust covers six health authority areas, including Suffolk and North Essex, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and Bedfordshire and Luton.

In Bedfordshire and Luton, patients wait more than three minutes less, with an average time for category one calls of 7:33 minutes.

Bosses at the trust say a significant part of the reason for this is Norfolk's geography. 

A spokesperson for EEAST said: "Because of the rural and coastal nature of Norfolk, it is a part of the EEAST region where communities have been historically challenged in receiving the same services as urban areas.

"We are doing all we can to improve performance by boosting the number of ambulances we have on the road, including recruiting additional clinical staff and using non-clinical drivers.

"We are also working to reduce the number of patients going to hospital, including directing patients to urgent community response services where appropriate.

"We have also expanded our network of hospital ambulance liaison officers who help co-ordinate and speed up handovers at hospitals, so patients can be seen more quickly.

"Although the NHS remains challenged, we have begun to see improvement in response times for the first two months of 2023."

The most recent category one responses for the east were:

  • Bedfordshire and Luton: 7:33 mins
  • Cambridgeshire and Peterborough: 9:15
  • Hertfordshire and West Essex: 8:54
  • Mid and South Essex: 8:37
  • Norfolk and Waveney: 10:36
  • Suffolk and North East Essex: 9:39
  • Trust average: 9:11