Dear Mr Robert Morton, CEO, East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust,

We were most concerned to read a report in the Watford Observer that your service was considering appealing for volunteers to drive ambulances, possibly alongside armed forces personnel.

We have received reports from members across Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire of the deterioration in ambulance services in their areas.

The most serious problems associated with the operations of the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust are connected with the low morale of existing staff.

The most recent CQC report has highlighted this factor in the unsatisfactory performance of your trust.

We are at a loss to understand the kind of thinking that supports employing fewer properly trained full-time personnel while increasing the numbers of lower-trained or untrained part-time replacements.

We earnestly call upon you and the Trust to abandon any plans which will further antagonise and demotivate your existing high-performing personnel, which will inevitably result in lower standards of performance than those currently being achieved.

We also ask that you carry out a review into the standards the trust is achieving with regard to elderly persons and the provision of ambulance transport for them to and from hospital and clinical appointments.

On behalf of the members in our region, we ask that you respond promptly and empathetically to our requests.

We shall be contacting the Newsquest Media Group and BBC with a request that they fully publicise this situation and all public reactions to it.

John Dowdle FRSA

Chair

Home Counties North Region

National Pensioners Convention