AMBULANCE crews in Lancashire have been working 12-hour shifts without a break in an effort to cope with a rising workload, the service's chief executive today admitted.

David Hill spoke after an anonymous letter to the Lancashire Evening Telegraph from somebody claiming to be a paramedic working in East Lancashire alleged the service had been "beyond crisis point" over the busy Christmas and New Year period.

But the ambulance boss said the pressures being placed on the service were being felt by all services across the country.

He added that management would be pushing for greater funding for the service in the coming months and would be looking at ways to deal with a variety of calls, including 999 calls for minor injuries.

It would also be meeting regularly with unions to discuss staff concerns, he said.

The claims in the letter include:

Paramedics are not getting their 30 minute meal break in a 12-hour shift, and, when they do sit down to lunch, are regularly interrupted to go back to work.

Mr Hill said: "We are aware of this. There are times and there are days when there is significant pressure within the system and there has been a problem.

"In the National Health Service, you cannot always guarantee that the meal break is taken precisely at the right time. But we do know that the majority of staff on the majority of days do get their breaks. We do ensure that it is high on our agenda."

Paramedics are regularly paged while handing over a patient in A & E to go and collect another.

Mr Hill said he was also aware of this and added: "We know this is not every day, or every week, but we know there are some days when they are under significant and serious pressures."

Paramedics are suffering from stress and are going off sick, as a result of overwork.

Mr Hill said: "There was some sickness absence during the Christmas and New Year period and it didn't help us. However, we have one of the lowest sickness rates among ambulance services in the country."

Management has ensured the service achieved its response time targets set by the Government at the expense of staff's health and morale.

Mr Hill said: "It is not all about time, but when it is a matter of life and death, then time can be important. It matters to the public, it matters to the Government and it is one of the key targets, but I also accept that the quality of the care that we provide is also very important to the patients and the public.

"The welfare of our staff is obviously key to what we achieve and continue to achieve and I would like to thank them for the tremendous job they do."

That staff faced victimisation for airing their views.

Mr Hill denied this allegation. "I would say there is certainly no victimisation of staff within the service."

The letter writer said: "For several years the Government has assessed the effectiveness of ambulance services on one basis -- that of response times. In essence these imply that the quicker an ambulance gets to an emergency, the better level of care the patient receives.

"If we achieved all our response times, yet every one of our patients died, we would still be classified as the best ambulance service in the country.

"Lancashire Ambulance Service management hide behind the response times that are being achieved at the expense of our staff's well-being."

In the last year, the service achieved a 95 per cent response rate for calls within 19 minutes and was on target for 97 per cent this year (April 2001 to March 31 2002) and on target for 78 per cent of life threatening calls responded to within eight minutes.

It received 125,000 999 calls last year and is currently 12 per cent up on that figure for this year.

Mr Hill added: "I am very pleased with the quality of service and with the high level of professionalism which our staff show, but I accept that workload has been on the up for many years."

He said there had been staff sickness over the festive period, but that the service had a better overall record than many other ambulance services.