West Midlands Ambulance Service to close hubs in four towns

All four community ambulance stations in Shropshire will close, West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) has announced.

It said the bases in Oswestry, Craven Arms, Bridgnorth and Market Drayton would shut on 4 October.

After that all ambulances in the county will be based in either Shrewsbury and Telford.

WMAS said the move was expected to improve response times by not tying up ambulances travelling to and from community stations.

As such it has not consulted over the plans.

It told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that in the fist six months of the year only a small fraction of emergency incidents in Bridgnorth or Market Drayton were actually responded to by crews based at the local stations.

"It is important to note that there are already thousands of ambulances circulating through the Market Drayton and Bridgnorth area, just not necessarily the Market Drayton or Bridgnorth vehicle," a spokesperson said.

Likewise, they said all ambulances in the county were currently cleaned and stocked with supplies in either Shrewsbury or Telford, meaning crews at community stations needed to swap vehicles for those readied in the county's two main towns.

"The other thing to bear in mind is that there are spare ambulances at the hubs, but not at CAS sites," the spokesperson said.

"So if the crew are delayed at hospital, which happens, it means the crew that are coming on to relieve them don't have an ambulance to use so we lose that crew for however long the delay is."

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