A PETITION to save an ambulance in Alston Moor has been launched, following the decision that NWAS (North West Ambulance Service) have taken to remove the ambulance from Alston Moor.

This will leave the newly recruited first responders without any support for at least an hour.

Zoe Paisley who started the petition, said: "We need the ambulance because of the unique rural setting we live in, for response times from Penrith or Carlisle can be anything from 40-60 minutes often much longer, our ambulance can be on the scene within 6-15 minutes, in critical life threatening situations these response times are crucial to saving lives, without our local ambulance that we have had for 47 years potentially lives will be lost."

Alston Moor Parish Councillor Elaine Grew has been strongly critical of the NWAS and said: "They will be removing it because, according to NWAS, our EMTs and paramedics are not trained at a high enough level.

"They said they need to be trained to a level four quality, at the moment they are level one.

"The process to achieving a level four means they ave to go and study for 18 months on a university style course.

"NWAS have said however that once they get that training they will be taken out of Alston to work elsewere in Cumbria, NWAS is being negligent.

"The area of Alsron is very spread out and the roads are high speed, I would say that there is at least one motorcycle accident a day that needs emergency response that doesn't take over 40 minutes.

"The Air Ambulance doesn't always run if they are out of hours, a farmer broke his femur and had to wait over 40 minutes for an ambulance because of this.

"I have invited NWAS to a parish council meeting on Monday, August 2, to ask them when they will address the public as to why they are doing this, the public are outraged and deserve answers."

NWAS has been approached for a comment but has yet to respond.