The health union Unison is claiming that lives are being put at risk by changes to the ambulance service across the former Gwent county region.

The union says the problems in the south east Wales area include delays in answering 999 calls and crew shortages.

Unison blames the problems on the creation of the all-Wales Ambulance Trust.

Under the reorganisation, staff salaries in the region had to be brought into line with other areas and - since there was no extra money - the service had to be streamlined.

Night cover

Unison branch chairman Barry Taylor says the cover at night has reached danger level.

"Where we had ten crews on throughout Gwent, we are now down to eight and we've have gone as low as six crews within the area," he said

Mr Taylor added that staff are also unhappy about an increase in the length of shifts and the decision to take crews out of ambulance stations and be deployed at major road junctions.

The Wales Ambulance Trust is to discuss new target response times, at a meeting in its St Asaph headquarters in north Wales next week.

Of the current response times for 999 calls - 50% inside eight minutes - less than half are being met in the local authority areas of Wales.

Of the 12 failing to meet the targets, the main blackspots are in south east Wales - Caerphilly with 37% and Monmouthshire 38%.

The ambulance service seems to do better in north Wales with Wrexham reaching 66% of ambulances arriving within eight minutes. Conwy, Anglesey and Denbighshire also hit over 60%.

The target is set to be increased to 75% by end of 2001 - ambulance officials will discuss the difficulties in achieving this next Tuesday.