Walsall paramedic and current Miss Black Country competing at Miss England final in Birmingham

Walsall Paramedic and current Miss Black Country, Ms Alice Jones, will join the other contestants at the Holiday Inn Birmingham Airport this weekend for the grand final of the Miss England Competition.

Ms Jones, from Walsall, joined the competition after winning Miss Black Country last August, the 26 year-old will join 12 other finalists hoping to take home the crown.

She said: "I never thought I'd be able to stand on a stage, this is my shot. I'm going to give it a go. If I was going to go into something like this I was going to go in guns blazing."

Ms Jones also works as a paramedic for the NHS, attending calls and transporting the sick and injured to hospitals around the West Midlands.

She said: "When I was 18 I worked on the patient transport units, that really sparked my interest into being a paramedic. I qualified to be a paramedic when I was 22, I always want to give back, and that aspect of the Miss England is really good."

The Miss England hopeful is aiming to use the event to help her fundraising and awareness campaigns, supporting World Against Single Use Plastic, cardiac arrest and CPR awareness.

Ms Jones said: "Being a paramedic is quite close to my heart, I've been to a few cardiac arrests and there just hasn't been the public help that there should have been.

"I want to raise awareness for women too, people are 23% less likely to give CPR to a female due to the fear of being accused of sexual assault, but that's not right."

The paramedic has recently come back from Ghana where she helped to helped to provide medical care to those who need it and to spread awareness about health care.

She said: "It was really humbling, we don't really realise how good the NHS is until we see this stuff. The nearest hospital was 42 miles away."

Ms Jones is completing a 42 mile round walk tomorrow(12) to raise awareness for the distance that Ghana locals have to walk to get to their nearest medical centre.

She said: "I’m walking the route from Walsall manor hospital to Sandwell hospital then to Queen Elizabeth hospital to Russell’s hall hospital and then new cross hospital and finishing back at Walsall manor."

Ms Jones will be performing in the final events of the Miss England event on Sunday(16) and Monday(17) where the winner will be crowned on the same day.

More information can be found on missengland.info. Anyone looking to vote can download the Miss England app on the app store.