AMBULANCES are continuing to meet their targets today, one week on week on from an incident in which crews took 42 minutes to arrive at the scene of a road accident.

AMBULANCES are continuing to meet their targets today, one week on week on from an incident in which crews took 42 minutes to arrive at the scene of a road accident.

Figures released to the Evening Star today show that between Monday and Friday last week the East Anglian Ambulance Trust reached more than 80pc of life-threatening calls within eight minutes, while 98.3pc were reached within 19 minutes.

Last Monday's accident happened on Landseer Road, Ipswich, at 8.30am. A minibus collided with a van and left one man with whiplash injuries but an unusually high number of emergency calls meant the nearest ambulance at that time was in Norfolk.

The ambulance arrived at the scene at 9.12am.

At that time paramedics were dealing with 11 other urgent incidents in Suffolk.

During the remainder of the week figures for the same time period (8.30am to 9.30am) are substantially lower and show what a more ordinary day's activity looks like.

Ambulances reached 13 out of 17 calls in East Suffolk within ten minutes.

All calls were reached within 25 minutes.

A spokesman for the ambulance trust said: "These figures show that last Monday was an exceptional set of circumstances and that, certainly in Ipswich, you are far more likely to get an ambulance within five or six minutes than have to wait 40 minutes.

"However, it does also show we can not reach every single call within the eight minute or even 19 minute targets. It's just the amount of resources we have got and when calls come in and they are already tied up it's just impossible."

The spokesman said that ambulance bosses has looked into the details of exactly what happened last Monday and are satisfied that they did everything we could in the circumstances.

999 calls within East Suffolk between 8.30am and 9.30am.

Tuesday:

8.01am Stowmarket, chest pains, four minutes

8.05am Ipswich, fall and back pain, 11 minutes

8.51am Ipswich, chest pains, four minutes

9.03am Ipswich, male choking, seven minutes

Wednesday:

9.02am Ipswich, heart failure, four minutes

9.04am Stowmarket, diabetic, four minutes

9.26am Ipswich, abdominal pain, 13 minutes

Thursday:

8.24am Felixstowe, head injury, five minutes

8.44am Woodbridge, chest pain, five minutes

9.00am Sudbourne, unknown injury, 25 minutes

9.27am Ipswich, dislocated shoulder, five minutes

Friday:

8:02am Stowmarket, male stroke, six minutes

8.48am Ipswich, fall, nine minutes

8.54am Ipswich, chest pains, five minutes

8.56am Ipswich, back pains, 15 minutes

9.12am Ipswich, chest pains, five minutes

9.17am Felixstowe, suspected stroke, seven minutes