THE trust which provides ambulance care to the people of North East Lincolnshire does not have enough qualified, skilled and experienced staff to meet people's needs, according to a new report.
The Care Quality Commission published its report into East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) provision last week following a routine inspection made in March 2013.
The report's findings showed that the trust was failing to meet the expected standard in three out of six areas, including care and welfare of people who use services, staffing and supporting workers.
The news came days after EMAS was hit with a £3.5-million fine after it missed a target for responding to emergency calls for the third year in a row.
Ambulances are supposed to arrive at 95 per cent of all life-threatening emergencies within 19 minutes.
But EMAS missed this target by three per cent despite meeting the target of attending 75 per cent of life threatening emergencies within eight minutes.
The service has lost £11 million in fines for missing the emergency response target in the last three years. It was fined £5 million for missing the target in 2010-11 and £2.5 million for missing the target in 2011-12.
Christine Talbot, from the health scrutiny committee at Lincolnshire County Council, said: "It is absolutely appalling that East Midlands Ambulance Service has been fined such a substantial sum of money. This is for the third year running – so we come to expect it. It is a massive amount of money.
"EMAS bosses keep assuring us that they are meeting the all important response times in Lincolnshire but this just proves they are not.
"Yet again, it is worrying news."
The failure over the target follows criticism over plans to replace 65 ambulance stations across the region with nine "superhubs", 19 stations and more than 100 community points over the next five years.
East Midlands clinical commissioning groups, which now oversee the performance of EMAS, have reassured patients action will be taken to improve the service's performance. Doctor Yvonne Owen, GP and locality lead for Lincolnshire East Clinical Commissioning Group, said: "It's vital that patients in the East Midlands receive high quality care as swiftly as possible and clearly there is still work to do to ensure that EMAS achieve the response standards required. All of our patients can be assured that we have acted and invested to significantly uplift performance."
