UNION leaders are celebrating after a campaign to bring ambulances back to Westmorland General Hospital bore fruit.

NHS bosses have announced a u-turn which will see paramedics taking ‘around a third’ of South Lakeland’s 999 calls to the Kendal hopsital instead of Lancaster.

Since last summer when hospital chiefs closed Ken-dal’s acute medical wards, patients suffering minor injuries have been forced to travel to Lancaster if Preston call centre oper-ators initially categorised the 999 call as more serious. On Tuesday, after pressure from campaign-ers, the North West Ambu-lance Serivce (NWAS) and the hospital issued a joint statement saying param-edics would be able to call doctors at WGH to request less serious cases to be redirected there.

MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale Tim Farron said the move would ease esc-alating capacity problems at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary by enabling ‘around a third’ of ambul-ances to go to Kendal.

Unison leaders have hailed the decision ‘great news’ and said response times in South Lakeland will improve. “We have been campaigning for this for more than a year. It is great news,” said Unison spokesman Mike Oliver, an NWAS paramedic.

Tony Halsall, chief exec-utive of the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust which runs the Bay’s hospitals, stressed the move was ‘not a return to WGH accept-ing seriously ill patients’.

“What we are trying to change is that paramedics will be able to seek advice from the department about whether a patient is taken to Kendal, Barrow or Lancaster depending on their clinical assess-ment, rather than the category assigned to the initial call made to the ambulance service. This should ensure that more patients that don’t need to make the journey to Barrow or Lancaster, are treated in Kendal ... and is absolutely in line with the plans that we imple-mented last August.”

“We have been taking patients to Lancaster unnecessarily and then been forced to queue for up to 90 minute to be seen, which has left a huge gap in resources in Cumbria.

“Our paramedics are well trained and know better than a computer who needs to be seen where.”

Mr Farron, added that he was ‘genuinely delighted’.

“Many more patients will now be able to go to WGH, which is better for patients and better for the hospitals involved because it should alleviate pressure at Lancaster and strengthen services at WGH.”