AMBULANCE union chiefs have blamed poor management support and inferior contracts for a predicted shortfall in paramedic numbers next year.

Trust chiefs last week revealed they could be more than a dozen paramedics short by early next year due to a drop in recruitment levels.

Hereford and Worcester Ambulance Service NHS Trust needs around 14 more paramedics to achieve Government targets requiring 75 per cent of crews to meeting eight-minute response times.

Trust bosses said many technicians were content to remain in their posts rather than take the extra step of becoming paramedics.

But this view was rejected in a joint union statement from Unison and the Association of Professional Ambulance Personnel (APAP).

"Those technicians who wish to progress face an uncertain future, poor support from the training department and managers, inferior contracts, the loss of a base station and the prospect of being placed anywhere in the two counties," read the statement.

"Until this service is able to offer a clear, structured training programme, which takes into account the welfare and personal needs of staff, it will always struggle to find applicants to fill these posts that in reality most staff would like to do."

Mike Belcher, secretary of APAP, said under the new Trust contracts, staff could end up being based, in theory, as far away as Ross-on-Wye or Hereford and would not be as well off.

"Some of us are better off on our current contracts than under the new Trust ones and would be worse off when we were trained up," he added.

The unions estimated the pay increase would be between £400-£600.

Steve McGuinness, director of operations for the trust, acknowledged there were issues of concern to technicians such as multi-based stations and contracts.

But he reiterated that some technicians were happy doing their jobs and would not want to become paramedics anyway.