SOUTH Western Ambulance Service has been ordered to make “significant improvements” to its NHS 111 services before patients are harmed.

Britain’s health watchdog The Care Quality Commission (CQC) found the service’s non-emergency number was ‘good’ for caring, but ‘inadequate’ for safety, effectiveness, responsiveness and leadership.

The region was one of the few in the country last year that managed to stay out of the red, but a recent inspection found serious failings.

The CCQ report, published today, found "patients were at risk of harm” due to high staff turn-over, high staff sickness rates, too many calls abandoned and too many calls going unanswered.

Often there were often not enough staff to take calls or give clinical advice. Staff reported working long hours and feeling high levels of stress and tiredness.

The report also found calls were sometimes answered by staff who were not trained to assess patients' symptoms and there was a risk that patients needing urgent attention were not given priority or put into a long queue.

The trust has been told that it must make significant improvements by July 8.

Ninety-five per cent of calls should be answered within 60 seconds but at one point the regional ambulance service was achieving the target 72 per cent of the time.

The inspection focused on the southern part of the service in Devon, Dorset, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, but its coverage stretches across Gloucestershire.

At the end of 2015 the service was roundly slammed by Cotswold councillors after it was revealed that paramedics were only getting to immediately life-threatening conditions in the Cotswolds in eight minutes 38.46 per cent of the time. Their target is 75 per cent.

Professor Sir Mike Richards, chief inspector of hospitals, said: "If patients needing help can't get a reply, if they are dealt with by someone who doesn't understand their immediate needs, or if they have to wait too long for a nurse or paramedic to call them back for an assessment before they are referred to the out-of-hours GP, it can have potentially serious consequences.

“We found that patients were at risk of harm because the triaging system was not good enough. Too many people whose call was urgent were not being assessed in relation to their medical needs in a timely manner.

"A lot of people needing less urgent advice might have to wait all day for a call back.

He added that "despite the best efforts of staff”, the service was not doing enough to identify why this was happening or what needed to be done to improve.

Ken Wenman, chief executive of South Western Ambulance Service, said: “The trust has always been open and transparent and welcomes the CQC report into the delivery of NHS 111 services.

“We treat every patient as our only patient and we want every patient that makes contact with us to have a first class service from an outstanding group of highly-committed staff.

“Nobody knows our organisation and staff like we do and there were no surprises in the main findings of the report as we have already been working collaboratively with our commissioners, NHS Improvement and NHS England colleagues to make improvements.

“We are never complacent on patient safety. Could we do better? Of course we could. Will we learn from this inspection? Of course we will.”