BOTH of the region's ambulance services have met Government targets for attending non-life threatening calls.

But one of them - the Tees, East and North Yorkshire Ambulance Service (Tenyas) - has failed to hit the target for life-threatening 999 calls.

Nationally, nearly two-thirds of ambulance services are failing to reach targets to reach non-life threatening emergencies within 14 minutes of a call in urban areas and 19 minutes in rural parts of the country.

The Government wants 95 per cent of ambulances to meet these targets for categ-ory B and category C calls.

The North East Ambulance Service (Neas) narrowly exceeded the target (by 95.1 per cent) while Tenyas hit 95.7 per cent. For Tenyas this was an improvement on the previous year's figure of 95.4 per cent.

But the Neas took a backward step compared to the previous year's 96 per cent.

The latest figures came as ministers praised the hard work of ambulance staff who successfully met the target for responding to the highest priority emergencies.

Across England the average ambulance was at the scene of 75.7 per cent of "immediately life-threatening" incidents within eight minutes, despite large increases in demand.

This now exceeds the Government target of 75 per cent for the first time.

For life-threatening category A calls, the Neas reached a response figure of 75.6 per cent, falling back from last year's figure of 76.6 per cent.

However, Tenyas was unable to meet the national target, reaching 73.7 per cent of life-threatening call-outs, a slight improvement from the previous year's 73.4 per cent.

Neas saw an 8.3 per cent increase in emergency calls while Tenyas saw a 4.7 per cent rise.