AN "understaffed and underfunded" ambulance service could face a £4m funding shortfall in the next financial year, councillors heard.

The North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) cannot reach an agreement with its funders about the £96m it has been offered, and says it needs at least £100m to operate its service.

Ambulance chiefs have still not signed their funding contract with the region's Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) - and there are just two weeks to go until the end of the financial year.

Nicola Thackray, business planning lead at the NEAS, told a packed meeting of Hartlepool Borough Council that the service had had a difficult year due to underfunding and staff shortages.

She said: "We are underfunded.

"There is not enough money for everything. At the moment we are not able to agree funding with our commissioners and at the moment we don't have a contract for next year that we can agree to.

"We are looking for £100m but the CCGs are only prepared to give us £96m."

She said understaffing and recruitment problems were a major priority for the next year.

"Paramedics are working 12 hour shifts, and often work longer than those 12 hours because calls come in.

"Being able to staff the service is really hard at the moment and we are short of paramedics nationally, not just in the region.

"It has been a really hard year and there is a big issue about recruitment, not just shortages."

Figures showed that the service had just missed its target of getting a response within eight minutes to three quarters of its top-priority calls, coming in at 73.26 per cent instead of the target of 75 per cent.

Ms Thackray added: "We recognise as all ambulance services do, we have not had a good winter. Our performance isn't as good as we want it to be.

The extraordinary council meeting at Hartlepool Civic Centre on Monday was for councillors to listen to the presentation from the NEAS on their performance for the last year.

The public, and councillors, challenged Ms Thackray on long delays waiting for ambulances and asked her if Hartlepool's hospital no longer having an Accident and Emergency department had contributed to the problem. She said she would look for figures which could highlight the issue.

The North East Commissioning Support unit is still negotiating over funding with the NEAS on behalf of the CCGs.

A spokeswoman for NEAS said: "The contract value for Emergency Care and Patient Transport Service for 2014/15 was £96.4m, with the value of all contracts held with the 12 North East CCGs being in excess of £100m.

"NEAS has asked for an increase on last year’s amount, and discussions are currently on-going with our commissioners.

"If an agreement isn’t reached by April, there is provision for negotiations to take longer. This is something we have done in the past, and will not affect our service to patients."