Patients who are seriously injured or are ill are now to get to hospital by ambulance in good time, figures reveal.

New figures from NHS Digital reveal that paramedics at the South Western Ambulance Service Trust (SWAST) took an average of seven minutes and nine seconds to get to C1 patients during July, just slightly above the national target of seven minutes.

This was an improvement from March when it took an average of nearly 10 minutes to get to C1 patients, three minutes more than the national target.

C1 patients are deemed to be the most life-threatening and can include patients who may have suffered heart attacks or may have suffered serious wounds.

The ambulance service covers Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and the former Avon area, including Bristol and Bath.

Meanwhile, the average response time across the UK was 7 minutes and 37 seconds with the north eastern and west midlands service managing to come in below seven minutes.

It comes after the Dorset Echo reported that it took SWAST more than three hours to get an 86-year-old elderly woman who injured herself after suffering a fall in Weymouth town centre in May.

The woman was comforted by shop staff and passers-by after she tripped over in the lane near Debenhams off New Bond Street.

At the time, the service said that managing the demand on the ambulance service across the south-west can be very challenging.

Commenting on the figures released yesterday, a spokeswoman for the SWAST, said: “South Western Ambulance Service has been working exceptionally hard to improve its performance.

“We are continuing to demonstrate a week-on-week improvement in our response times for our most critical and seriously ill patients, and we have robust plans in place to continue this improvement across all categories of patients.

“We will continue to work with our strategic partners to negotiate further resources to enable us to deliver the highest-quality response to patients.”

However, despite the improvement in response times for less serious C2 patients, ambulance crews still failed to get Class C2 patients on time taking an average of 25 minutes against a national target of 18 minutes.