It said 8,360 calls were made in the 10 days starting on Christmas Eve, which is about one every two minutes.

Another record was broken on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day with 2,089 calls being received in the 48-hour period.

The service said it usually has up to 400 calls per day with about 500 during December but the figure reached 500 before December this year.

Spokesman Bob Lee said the average response time in Staffordshire was still seven minutes, despite the rise in the number of calls.

He added: "Many other ambulance services have reported increases throughout the year."

The number of patients moved to hospital by emergency ambulance in the county was 3,279 over the 10 days.

Chief executive Roger Thayne said: "Because of the way that Staffordshire delivers its service, a demand level which would have potentially overwhelmingly swamped a more traditionally organised service, demand has been met and successfully dealt with."