AMBULANCE chiefs in Gloucestershire vow improvements have been made to the service, despite no change in its ratings from last year.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) annual health check rated GWAS.nhs.uk" target="_blank">Great Western Ambulance Service as ‘weak’ for quality of care and ‘fair” for financial management – the same as the previous year.

The report, which covered 2008/9, showed no change but GWAS chairman Tony Fitzsimons gave reassurance that huge improvements had been made to boost next year's ratings.

Almost 200 additional staff, a new computer-aided dispatch system and a major overhaul of the control rooms were some of the changes implemented in the second half of the year.

Mr Fitzsimons said: “Last year (2008-09) was a time of great challenge and change. Clearly our performance over the whole year was not good enough, and we accept that, but many of the changes that were introduced in the second half of the year are now resulting in faster response times and other improvements to patient care.”

Recently GWAS was ranked best in the country for answering 999 calls – with around 98 percent being answered within five seconds.

It has also boosted the number of paramedics.

GWAS crews responded to over 11 percent more calls than last year – 124,857 for the six months April-September, compared to 112,426 for the corresponding period in 2008-09.

David Whiting, chief executive, said: “The fact that our performance against national targets has improved, alongside being called to record numbers of incidents, means we are getting to more patients more quickly than ever.”