The questions that I will be putting to the West Midlands Ambulance Service at Rugby Borough Council Scrutiny meeting 4th October. Cllr Jerry Roodhouse said “We need to see greater engagement and openness by WMAS, Rugby is a major town and expanding we should not be seen as an outpost of the West Midlands”

Cllr Jerry Roodhouse has sent the following questions in for answering when the WMAS turn up for the meeting as follows

• Could they confirm that Ambulances services are assessed by response times, they must reach 75% of category 1 calls within 8 mins and so on. If so, how does WMAS achieve this figure? is it fair to say that the larger urban areas have more ambulances, so if you get to the Category 1 calls in Birmingham, Stoke, the Black Country and Coventry you meet the criteria needed. 
• What is the impact of the Clinical Validation of Cat 3 & 4 patients
• How do Rugby’s figures compare to Coventry’s? for cat 1 calls and for cat 3 and 4 
• It is recognised that the huge demand on the NHS has resulted on crews being stuck at hospital and hence not in Rugby. What brought about the change away from the practice that was being developed 20 years ago by Warwickshire Ambulance Service where training paramedics to become Emergency Care practitioners with the goal of treating and managing patients in the community and not transporting them to hospital unless necessary. This plan was to help ease the demand on hospitals.
• When WMAS say that the Rugby Ambulance is hardly ever in Rugby, what will happen to the people of Rugby if we ever do return to the historical demands on the NHS as the Health Secretary claims. Ambulances won’t be in the area or even at UHCW but at the Ambulance hub 17 miles from St Cross and 20-30 miles away from Rugby’s villages and Southam.
• Could WMAS confirm how did the review take place and how can they justify the decision to remove the complete service from a large town in such a short space of time. What were their considerations, was the final decision taken by the WMAS board in an open and transparent way if not why not?
• Could WMAS state how downtime will be avoided in Coventry? The crews still have to return for breaks and to finish and without an ambulance in Rugby they will be covering larger distances to do this?
•   In the west Midlands which Hospital Trusts have the longest handover periods
• Could WMAS confirm that this change has nothing to with its financial position