Mr. Robert Morton:

The 80% target is designed to reflect the reality of rurality whereby there are some places that simply cannot be got to. Aggregate targets, by their nature, mean some patients will experience an incredibly quick response of five or six minutes, whereas other patients will have a delayed response. A total of 71% of patients were responded to within 90 minutes of an echo call in 2022. As for the balance of those patients, the average response time nationally was probably 24 or 25 minutes, but within that there would have been significant delays for some patients. In the month of March 2021, for example, which was the peak of the Covid period in early 2021, some patients waited several hours for an ambulance.