A DALES town council has sent a strongly-worded letter to GP commissioners expressing opposition to plans to reduce the number of paramedics in local ambulances.

The letter, sent to NHS Durham Dales, Easington and Sedgefield Clinical Commissioning Group from Barnard Castle Town Council’s clerk, Michael King, follows a public meeting in the town which rejected the proposed changes.

In his letter Mr King states: “Barnard Castle Town Council is strongly opposed to the proposed changes. The CCG has provided no evidence that these changes will improve ambulance response times in Teesdale and Weardale. The proposals are ill-funded, poorly rationalised and are clearly detrimental to the people of Teesdale and Wears in that they will diminish the service for which ring-fenced funding has been in place since 2008 by removing qualified paramedics from the Dales.”

The CCG wants to scrap current arrangements which mean that dedicated ambulances serving Teesdale and Weardale always have two paramedics.

The GPs in charge of commissioning believe that by spreading paramedics throughout their patch and pairing single paramedics with emergency care assistants it will improve emergency response times, which currently lag well behind the national target of reaching emergencies within eight minutes in 75 per cent of calls.

To compensate the dales the plan is for the North East Ambulance Service to recruit 14 more emergency care assistants as drivers and to station an additional paramedic-crewed rapid response car in Bishop Auckland to try to take the pressure off the dales ambulances.

Mr King said the proposed changes “will result in a worse and less equitable ambulance service for the people of Teesdale and Weardale.”

Because of widespread opposition to the proposals the CCG has agreed to put the plans on hold until April 2016 to allow independent evaluation to take place.