The case for merging the region’s ambulance service to create one ‘super’ organisation across the whole South West has been put before South Gloucestershire Council.

Great Western Ambulance Service (GWAS) director of nursing, Liam Williams, held a frank discussion with members of the authority’s health scrutiny select committee.

He said GWAS had to make changes to meet a government requirement that all services become foundation trusts, or join an existing one, by 2014.

“We are a £87million organisation,” he said. “That is not sustainable. Because we are relatively small we have high costs. We need to be £120million plus.”

GWAS is proposing a merger with the South West Ambulance Service Trust, which covers Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall, and admits the acquisition would lead to senior job losses.

via Gazette Series.