Patients in Barking and Dagenham with potentially life-threatening conditions are having to wait longer for an ambulance than anywhere else in London.

Ambulances in the borough didn’t reach patients within eight minutes 48 per cent of the time in August – the highest percentage of call-outs that missed the eight-minute target in the whole of London that month.

Service bosses blamed a shortage of paramedics and increased demand. The number of ambulances hitting response time targets in the borough fell significantly between March and August, from 76pc.

Number crunching by Labour London Assembly Member John Biggs shows the success rate for the eight-minute target in the capital as a whole has also dropped – by 19pc, to 62pc.

He said this reflected the strain being placed on the London Ambulance Service at a time when its budget is suffering government cuts of £53m.

But a spokesman for London Ambulance Service (LAS) criticised Mr Biggs’ figures.

He said they had been worked out with the assumption the LAS target is 100pc of people seen within eight minutes when, in fact, it is 75pc.

Assistant director of operations at London Ambulance Service Michael Pearce said the strain on the service was down to an increase in demand each year.

He added: “We are responding to more patients in a serious and life-threatening condition than last year.

“There is also a shortage of paramedics in the UK, which is making it difficult to recruit, but we’ve launched a national and international recruitment campaign to bring in 500 more frontline staff across London.

“Despite this, we reached 75pc of patients with serious and life threatening conditions within nine minutes and 25 seconds in August.”

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