Despite extra calls paramedics are hitting government targets

The claim is made by East Anglian Ambulance Trust, which says its crews, on average, answered an emergency call every two minutes in May.

In the past year they have attended 16,655 more calls than they did in the previous 12 months.

The figures are equal to an extra month of work for the paramedics who cover Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk.

Compared with the government's national figures, the increase is more than any other area which is predominantly rural.

Meeting response times

The only places to record a bigger rise were London, Manchester and the West Midlands all of which have large urban populations.

In May, more than 20,000 individual calls were dealt with by East Anglian call-takers and 13,387 emergency ambulance trips resulted - an increase of more than 13% on May last year.

Crews did manage to meet the key government response time target - reaching 76.16% of life-threatening calls within eight minutes.

"The number of responses rose steadily throughout last summer, and this year we have already reached last summer's peak in May," said director of operations Paul Sutton.