Ambulance crews are having to make 200 mile round trips to reach patients due to handover delays, a senior official has said.

Members of North Staffordshire Pensioners' Convention were told that West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) is still experiencing significant challenges with delays at the Royal Stoke and other hospitals.

Vivek Khasu, strategy and engagement director at WMAS, was invited to the NPSC's monthly meeting to explain the situation the service is facing.

He said that WMAS had been losing up to a third of its capacity due to lengthy delays at emergency departments.

At times the service is having to send crews from as far away as Warwick or Hereford to respond to 999 calls in North Staffordshire, which Mr Khasu says 'is not right'.

He said: "Before Covid our staff would do maybe six to seven jobs in a 12 hour shift. Curently that's more like four – at its worst it's been two, two-and-a-half. Sometimes, if your first patient needs a trip to hospital you'll do one job in 12 hours.

"That's not a productive use of resource – an ambulance and two staff members is a very precious resource, and quite often it's not being used well.

"If you said to any part of the public sector, or private sector, do what you're meant to do, but we're going to take a third of your resources away from you, it's not going to work."

Mr Khasu expained that three years ago WMAS had taken the 'bold step' of investing £25 million in additional resources.

But he said that increasing overall capacity is not a sustainable solution, and that 'robust conversations' are taking place with NHS partners to address the handover delay problem.

Mr Khasu added: "We need the resources that we already have out there doing their job – we shouldn't have to backfill it, but that's currently where we are."

On a more positive note, the NSPC audience heard that Staffordshire is the best place in the West Midlands for diverting patients away from emergency departments to more appropriate community services, with up to 70 patients a day being treated this way.

But ambulance handover delays remain high at University Hospitals of North Midlands – in June, handovers were taking one hour 24 minutes on average.

NHS campaigner Ian Syme called for North Staffordshire's politicians to apply more pressure on the health service to tackle the issue.

He said: "At Stoke it's perpetually well over an hour, and has been for some time. In 2024, the new chief executive at UHNM said this was intolerable and unacceptable. In 2026, the average handover time is still well over an hour.

"NHS England are supposed to monitoring ambulance handover delays at the Royal Stoke to get them down to the 45 minute maximum. They haven't been monitoring this to great effect. Could I ask MPs take this up as a concerted action by northern Staffordshire MPs to ensure that the Royal Stoke delivers an urgent and emergency care system that is both safe and prompt."

Newcastle MP Adam Jogee, who was also on the panel at the NSPC meeting, said he would raise the issue with UHNM chief executive Simon Constable.

UHNM has taken various steps to reduce waiting times at Royal Stoke A&E this year, including improved frailty assessments and better use of the discharge lounge.