§ Mr. Home RobertsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what changes there have been to plans by the Scottish ambulance service to expand and develop the Haddington ambulance station; and how the numbers of vehicles and staff deployed at Haddington have changed.
§ Mr. StewartThe service provided from the Haddington station was expanded over the last two years to take account of the change at Roodlands hospital and there are no plans to further develop this station. The number of staff was increased from 22 to 44, but two have since been transferred to Musselburgh which also provides cover to East Lothian.
Until January 1993, there were five accident and emergency vehicles available for use at Haddington during weekday day shifts, but as demand did not require five crewed vehicles there are now four vehicles.
It should be noted that the numbers of vehicles used can vary at the time of day according to demand and that there has been a significant improvement in response times to emergency calls with the introduction of the techniques of deploying vehicles to key points adjacent to population centres where demand is known to be high instead of requiring all vehicles to return to station.