SERVICES at Great Western Ambulance Service have been given a poor bill of health in the latest quality control checks.

GWAS was rated ‘weak’ for its quality of care and ‘fair’ for financial management by the Care Quality Commission.

The service has defended itself and says it is rapidly improving and responding to more 999 calls than ever before.

Chairman Tony FitzSimons said: "Last year was a time of great challenge and change. Clearly our performance over the whole year was not good enough, and we accept that, but many of the changes that were introduced in the second half of the year are now resulting in faster response times and other improvements to patient care.

"Our focus was on making sustainable changes that would deliver patient benefits over the long term.

"We were aware at the time that many of the improvements we introduced would not be reflected in the CQC ratings for 2008-09."

Almost 200 additional staff have been recruited to control rooms and on the frontline treating patients and a new computer system has been introduced.

Chief executive David Whiting, who joined GWAS in April this year, said: "When I arrived at the trust, I saw very early how things were already improving due to the efforts of everyone in the organisation, investments that had been made and the steps that had been taken in the second half of 2008-09.

"Those, plus further changes made in the current year, mean we are a significantly better service, while recognising that we still have work to do to get to where we – and our patients – expect us to be."

In recent months GWAS was ranked best in the country for answering 999 calls, with around 98 percent being answered within five seconds and was praised for its infection control measures, particularly the use of specialist make-ready teams who keep ambulances clean.

The service is responding to 11 percent more calls than last year – 124,857 for the six months April to September compared to 112,426 for the same period in 2008-09.