Control room errors shock.

Byline: By MARIE LEVY

MORE than 250 Teesside ambulances were given the wrong directions in a two-year period, it has been revealed.

A Freedom of Information request by Middlesbrough Council has highlighted 254 cases in which ambulances were misdirected between October 2006 and July 2008.

An investigation by the North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) has revealed that 80 of the mishaps were down to human error, 97 were caused by the ambulance satellite navigation system, and 66 were due to a system error with the command and control system.

The FOI request was launched following a meeting of Tees Valley Joint Health Scrutiny Committee, in which an individual submitted a report claiming there had been 45 instances over the past year when problems had arisen through Teesside ambulance calls being handled in Newcastle.

About 40% of Teesside calls are answered in Newcastle - calls are transferred within a second if lines at Ladgate Lane, Middlesbrough, are busy.

BT calls automatically bring up a caller's location at the control room, but this is lost when calls are transferred from Teesside to Newcastle - this, argues NEAS chiefs, strengthens the case for having one control centre.

Campaigners had hoped the FOI request would put a stop to plans to close the Teesside control centre and handle all calls in Tyneside.

They claimed a lack of local knowledge had already led to emergency vehicles arriving at the wrong addresses, including ambulances being sent to Stockton instead of Grove Hill, Port Mulgrave instead of Saltburn, and one call sent to Redcar when the incident was in Sunderland.

The report - which can be accessed via the NEAS website - states that the 254 cases represent less than 0.05% of all NEAS emergency and urgent activity in the 21-month period.

It also stresses that human error can happen at both the Newcastle and the Ladgate Lane site - 26 of the 80 human error mistakes occurred at Middlesbrough.

In the report Graham Robinson, control manager, states crews are trained not to solely rely on satellite navigation aids, and that it is their responsibility to ensure they have an A to Z.

"All other emergency services across the country experience similar issues, but these isolated incidents are outweighed by the benefits of satellite navigation systems in the majority of cases."

He added: "Ambulance response performance to residents in Darlington, which is as distant to Newcastle as many towns on Teesside, is one of the fastest and most consistent across the whole service although it is managed by Newcastle."

One Teesside paramedic, who asked not to be named, said: "We can tell when calls come in from Newcastle just because of lack of information.

"Our control staff give crews more information and they know a lot of the regulars and the addresses of people who are dangerous."

The controversial decision to close the Teesside ambulance control room and handle all NEAS calls in Hebburn was made last May.

The Tees Valley joint Health Scrutiny Committee referred the matter to Health Secretary Alan Johnson but an independent panel said the move should go ahead. NEAS is now in talks with the North East Strategic Health Authority to decide how to move forward but no date has been set for the closure of the Ladgate Lane centre.