AN ambulance service is performing badly and failing to meet national standards, bosses said.

Yorkshire Ambulance Service has rated itself as "weak" against quality of service and use of resources indicators.

The grade is the lowest on a four-point scale.

The rating was made during a self-assessment of the service's annual health.

The service's chief executive, Jayne Barnes, said: "The board has taken a very hard line during its assessments.

"We have declared non-compliance with core standards where we cannot point to hard evidence of effective systems and processes through which we are meeting these standards.

"By taking this rigorous approach, we can be sure we have clear goals for improvement for the coming year.

"While this is not the position we would like to be in, this declaration provides an honest assessment of the trust's position in the 2006-7 period against a number of nationally defined standards."

This is the first assessment the service has carried out since its formation on July 1, last year, when Tees, East and North Yorkshire Ambulance Service merged with the West and South Yorkshire services.

Mrs Barnes said the declaration did not acknowledge the management team's efforts to address the weaknesses.

"For example, we have recently made substantial improvements in our activation and response times, achieving an average of 75.2 per cent for our Category A eight minute response, since April 1," she said.

"Our score, however, only reflects fact that we did not achieve the national target of 75 per cent in 2006-7.

"In addition, our score for use of resources only reflects our position of voluntary financial turnaround.

"It does not take account of our being on track with a financial recovery plan agreed by the Department of Health."

The Healthcare Commission will publish its own ratings for the service in October after looking at the self-assessment results.

Managers at the ambulance service have been told to make 15 per cent savings to reduce a £5m deficit.

Bosses say the cuts will not affect services to the public.

Instead, they said the organisation will become more "clinically focused"