THE North West Ambulance Service has been criticised for not providing the best possible care in the Ribble Valley.

Members of the Health and Wellbeing Partnership in the Ribble Valley are set to submit a formal complaint to NWAS following concerns of slow response times.

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The group, which is made up of borough councillors, will also ask for performance target data to be supplied to the group and for representatives to attend a future meeting to answer questions.

Councillors have called on the service to introduce more ambulances to the area around Clitheroe which serves Royal Blackburn Hospital.

They have said that the response times for emergency vehicles getting to rural locations and then transferring a patient to Blackburn are too slow and need to be improved.

The partnership has not expressed concern over the service provided around Longridge which sees patients taken to Royal Preston Hospital and around Gisburn where patients go to Airedale General Hospital in Steeton.

Cllr Ken Hind, who is a member of the partnership, said: “The problem that we have is the time it takes for an ambulance to get to a patient, even in the centre of Clitheroe, and then out to Blackburn.

“Sometimes people can wait a long time because there just aren’t enough in the area.

“If that happens and people still really need to go to a hospital the only other option available is to drive but some people do not have a car.

“People should not have to rely on that option as that’s what ambulances are for.

“We are going to ask for representatives from the ambulance service to come to one of our meetings so we can try and work out a solution.

“I think that one way to solve this problem would be to provide more ambulances in and around Clitheroe as this would relieve a lot of pressure.”

Partnership member Cllr Mary Robinson said: “ People who live in Blackburn can get to the motorway very easily and to the hospital in no time at all but that simply is not the case in the Ribble Valley.”

A spokesman for the ambulance service said that it had not received a complaint yet and would not be commenting at this stage.