A mother described how she tried to resuscitate her child as she waited for almost 30 minutes for paramedics to respond to a 999 call.

Eastern Daily Press: Bella Louise Hellings, who died after paramedics from the East of England Ambulance Service took 30 minutes to respond to a 999 call. Photo: Submitted.Bella Louise Hellings, who died after paramedics from the East of England Ambulance Service took 30 minutes to respond to a 999 call. Photo: Submitted. (Image: Archant)

Three-month-old Bella Louise Hellings died on March 11 and was one of the serious cases mentioned on the front of yesterday's Eastern Daily Press over which the East of England Ambulance Service Trust (EEAST) is facing questions.

Her mother Amy Carter, from Thetford, called 999 after her daughter had a fit and stopped breathing.

She stayed on the phone to the operator and started CPR until paramedics finally arrived after 26 minutes.

The most urgent 999 calls are supposed to be responded to within eight minutes.

When they arrived at her home near Bury Road, in Thetford, paramedics got Bella into the ambulance and rushed to West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds.

But, according to Miss Carter, there was a further delay as the crew did not know where they were going.

Her partner, Scott Hellings, 24, arrived at the hospital before the ambulance, despite leaving from Thetford at the same time.

Miss Carter said: 'They went the wrong way. They followed the satnav and it was a paramedic from Diss on her first shift ever. It was her first day.'

She told the EDP that she was shouting from the back of the ambulance to try to direct the driver as they went around one roundabout in Bury St Edmunds twice and headed through Bury town centre to the hospital rather than sticking on the dual carriageway.

'She was taken into hospital and that is the last I saw of her,' said Miss Carter.

An inquest into Bella's death was opened on March 22 by Norfolk's coroner and the case is now being investigated.

The ambulance service wrote to the family last week and visited Miss Carter on Wednesday to say they would look into what happened.

The couple, who have one other child, are now taking legal advice.

'We want the ambulance service to realise what they have done,' she said. 'They didn't give Bella what she needed. They didn't get to her in time.'

Elizabeth Truss MP met the interim chief executive of the ambulance trust, Andrew Morgan, after the EDP reported on the case of Catherine Barton in January.

The 27-year-old veterinary nurse died near Thetford golf club in August 2011 after waiting for more than 90 minutes to be removed from the wreckage of her Ford Ka which had crashed.

Responding to Bella's death, Ms Truss said yesterday: 'This is incredibly sad and my thoughts are very much with the parents. The 999 call from the mother surely must have made this a priority case and for the ambulance to take so long to arrive is of serious concern.

'There are a number of unanswered questions and I expect the EEAST to be investigating this as a matter of urgency.'

In the aftermath of Miss Barton's death the ambulance service said it had made improvements and changes to the way it responded to calls.

It was a reassurance repeated yesterday following the inquest into the death of 74-year-old Isabel Carter who died after waiting for four hours for an ambulance at her Wymondham home.

But despite the pledges, concerns over slow response times – as highlighted by the EDP's Ambulance Watch campaign – remain.

A spokesman for the trust said an investigation was under way to establish the full circumstances of Bella's death and the trust could not comment further.

Bella's death is one of four serious incidents being investigated by the ambulance trust's board.

At a board meeting yesterday, John Martin, director of clinical quality, said the trust had received nine 'serious incident' complaints in March in which four patients had died and ambulance delays were recorded. The trust had said in a report it was investigating five deaths.

He added that the NHS trust had decided to report the number of serious incidents in light of the Francis Report into the scandal at Mid Stafford Hospital.

The serious incidents where patients died occurred in Thetford, Clacton, Ipswich, and another in Essex, while three other incidents were in the Norwich area, where there were delays in getting ambulances to patients.

Mr Martin said: 'All of those are currently being investigated and at this stage there is no correlation between the patients' deaths and the process going wrong. We run an emergency service and patients do die and we need to be clear about the correlation between the two.

'We are one of the biggest and busiest ambulance trusts in the country and we would expect more incidents.'

During the whole of 2012/13, the ambulance trust received 1,175 complaints, which was a 71pc increase on the 687 complaints during the previous 12 months.

Andrew Morgan, interim chief executive, said: 'We are trying to be as open and transparent as we can. We have taken the decision to report publicly the number of serious incidents as our duty of candour.

'I think we should be up front and transparent and more organisations need to go down the line we are going down, so the public know the different challenges we face.'

tom.bristow@archant.co.uk