Go-ahead for 999 merger

Members of the county service's trust board voted to approve the steps which would see it joined with the West Midlands Ambulance Service by the end of the year.

It came despite concerns by its former chief and a local MP that standards will drop.

The Staffordshire trust has agreed that if the West Midlands service ups its performance in-line with the 'criteria' set out by the Partnership Board - the controversial amalgamation can take place.The announcement has been met with anger from Staffordshire MP Michael Fabricant, who says the criteria is "a betrayal of the most dangerous kind to people living in Staffordshire".

He says the most important criterion to be achieved by any ambulance service is the speed by which it can get to a victim in an extreme emergency, which is set nationally as an eight minute target.

He says Staffordshire achieves this target 87 per cent of the time compared with the West Midlands at 77 per cent.

Mr Fabricant said: "However, as the national target is only 75 per cent, the time is now being deemed ripe to swallow up the award winning Staffordshire Service effectively dumbing it down. It is a betrayal of the most dangerous kind to people living in Staffordshire."

Before today's meeting ex-Staffordshire Ambulance Service chief executive Roger Thayne had urged the trust board not to approve the criteria, saying it would lower the standards of the service.

Mr Thayne said: "If this criteria is accepted then the board of the Staffordshire Ambulance Service is accepting that the standards of response, clinical outcomes and efficiency could be brought down to the levels set in national targets, or those levels achieved by the West Midlands Ambulance Service."

Mr Thayne says he believes that the merger is earmarked for October 2007 and that it is proposed that two sub divisions of WMAS would be created - one for Staffordshire, Shropshire, and Coventry and Warwickshire and another for Brimingham and the Black Country and Hereford and Worcestershire.

He says he believes such large services will be 'operationally unable to deliver high performance.'

The Partnership Board, which is made up of representatives from Staffordshire Ambulance Service and West Midlands Ambulance Service as well as trades unions and the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority, spent six months establishing the criteria .

The merger criteria is set to be discussed by the West Midlands Ambulance Service board on Monday and the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority later this month.