WORCESTERSHIRE has been left “at the bottom of the pile” in a region-wide shake-up of the ambulance service, say watchdog chiefs.

Leaders from the West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust were grilled by county watchdog the health overview and scrutiny committee) at County Hall, Worcester.

Trust bosses want to base ambulances at 16 community ambulance stations around the county instead of the seven permanent ambulance stations now in use so they can get to 999 calls more quickly.

Seven of these stations are in use by ambulance crews – Droitwich fire station, Pershore fire station, Malvern police station, the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch, Bromsgrove town centre, Cherry Tree Walk in Worcester, Blackpole in Worcester, the existing ambulance station in Spetchley Road in Worcester, Stourport and the minor injuries unit in Kidderminster.

Negotiations are underway to use the six other locations - Evesham fire station, Redditch fire station, Churchill in Redditch, Bromsgrove station, Dines Green in Worcester and the centre of Kidderminster.

At the very least these stations are expected to have toilets, hot and cold running water, a fridge, a microwave, computer and TV.

Ambulances themselves would be based at a central “hub” which is expected to be in Worcester, possibly near the police HQ at Hindlip or at the current ambulance station in Spetchley, before travelling out to the community ambulance stations near areas of high emergency activity.

The hub would be where the ambulances are stocked, maintained, repaired, cleaned and subject to other checks.

The seven existing ambulance stations in Worcester, Pershore, Evehsam, Malvern, Redditch and Kidderminster could either be closed or incorporated into the scheme as community stations.

Because negotiations are underway to secure some of the new community stations HOSC member, Gerry O’Donnell said the 16 sites were just a “wish-list”.

Councillors rounded on Craig Cooke, the trust’s resilience and support services director and Nick Henry, general manager of the Worcestershire division of the service, over what some saw as a new blow for the county following the controversial decision to close Bransford, near Worcester.

The Bransford site, now sold to West Mercia Police, was the emergency operations centre which handled 999 calls until trust bosses decided to close it and centralise call handling in Brierley Hill in Dudley.

Your Worcester News launched a “keep it local” campaign to save Bransford, fearing vital local knowledge and skills would be lost.

Coun Fran Oborski said of the proposed shake-up: “If you have got a major incident in Clows Top or out towards Tenbury and your nearest community ambulance station is based in Kidderminster - that’s a good a 20 minutes for that ambulance to get there, however serious that incident. Huge parts of rural north Worcestershire are not going to have an ambulance anywhere near them on this scheme.”

Coun Penelope Morgan also expressed concern about how ambulances would be able to get to Tenbury, Kempsey, Upton and outlying areas rural areas.

She said: “We are not getting the service we were promised when we lost Bransford. We were guaranteed four years ago we would have a tip-top service because we had to be centralised. It strikes me that we are bottom of the pile. How much is this costing us in lives and money?”

But ambulance leaders defended the scheme and said existing ambulance stations, many of them built in the 60s and 70s, were “quite aged” with a combined repair bill backlog of £4.5 million.

Mr Cooke said ambulances would be based more widely under the “Make Ready” scheme and the system had worked well in Staffordshire.

He said time would be saved as auxiliaries would clean, prepare and check vehicles an hour before staff came on shift which would reduce “lost hours”.

“The key issue is having resources ready to respond” he said.

He said Make Ready was also about developing more efficient ways of working to cope with demand which was rising by around 6 per cent a year.

The Make Ready scheme in Worcestershire is expected to be in place by 2013.