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South East Coast Ambulance Service declares critical incident

SECAMB South East Coast AmbulanceSECAMB
Secamb urged people to only call 999 in a serious emergency while it tried to resolve IT issues

A critical incident has been declared by an ambulance service that covers four counties.

South East Coast Ambulance Service (Secamb) said IT issues on Thursday night caused it to move to back-up telephone systems.

It was answering calls and responding to patients but it urged people to only call 999 in a "serious emergency".

Secamb said it continued to experience "significant IT system issues" on Friday morning.

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Secamb is responsible for covering Brighton & Hove, East Sussex, West Sussex, Kent, Surrey, and North East Hampshire.

It said the IT issues resulted in the loss of its Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system.

In a statement on Friday morning, it said: "We continue to experience significant IT system issues, which are affecting our Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) and which are preventing our systems from working fully.

"We have been able to move back onto our CAD, operating it as a standalone system at our East Emergency Operations Centre in Coxheath, Kent. We are continuing to work closely with our IT providers on fully resolving the issues.

"We would like to thank the public for their ongoing support and urge them to continue to help us manage the demand placed upon us by only calling 999 in the event of a serious emergency."

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