THE huge gulf between England's best performing ambulance service and the trusts serving the North-East and North Yorkshire has been revealed.

Only half of North-East Ambulance Service vehicles (50.1 per cent ) got to the scene of life-threatening 999 calls within eight minutes, according to new figures.

By contrast, almost nine out of ten ambulances in Staffordshire got to the scene of the Category A incident within eight minutes (87.4 per cent).

The figures for Tees, East and North Yorkshire Ambulance Service (TENYAS) show that their vehicles responded to Category A calls in 55.5 per cent of cases - compared with the Staffordshire score of 87.4 per cent.

But despite the set-back, spokesmen for both regional trusts predicted that their ambulance services would hit the Government's ambitious April 2001 target of 75 per cent of life-threatening calls being reached within eight minutes.

Steve Whinfield, director of operations with the North-East Ambulance Trust pointed out that the figures were based on the first year of the merger between Northumbria and County Durham services and did not reflect the changes that had taken place and were being planned.

One of the first fruits of those changes will be the deployment of 16 rapid response units - trained paramedics using fast cars and motorcycles - on September 25.

Other changes in the pipeline include stationing ambulances at strategic points around the region rather than at traditional ambulance stations.

One of the most controversial proposals embraced by both regional services is to recruit and train more volunteers to act as "first responders" - holding the fort in remote areas until an ambulance arrives..

Mr Whinfield pointed out that although the North-East Ambulance Service was in the bottom third in the league table of mainly rural ambulance trusts in England, the results meant that the service was meeting the current national standard of 50 per cent of all Category A call-outs being reached within eight minutes.

Bob Rose, spokesman for TENYAS, said: "We are on course to achieve the new standards."

Two new fast response units are to be deployed in the Tees area.

But Robert Lee, spokesman for Staffordshire Ambulance Trust, said they would not be deploying paramedics on motorbikes and "first responders" would only assist qualified ambulance personnel.

He said the key to their success is the policy of scrambling ambulances as soon as they get the 999 call and telling them en route whether the incident is life-threatening and deploying ambulances flexibly where they are needed.