A toddler had to wait five hours for an ambulance last year - the longest wait a patient had for an ambulance in the SY11 postcode.

The callout for the 20-month-old was classed as a minor medial incident.

New figures revealed on Thursday revealed the longest wait in the Shropshire Council area was also for a minor medical incident in which a 61-year-old female in the SY12 postcode, which covers the area around Ellesmere, Cockshutt, Baschurch and Welshampton, had to wait five hours, 32 minutes and 25 seconds.

This was because multiple crews were called away to higher priority calls, West Midland Ambulance Service said.

The figures were revealed at the Shropshire Council’s Health and Wellbeing Board in a report detailing 10 lengthiest response times in Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin in 2018/19.

Councillor Dean Carroll, committee member, added: “I am most concerned about the failure to meet response time in the SY11 and SY10 postcodes. 

“This is Oswestry. This is an urban area. I wonder if there is something fundamentally wrong with the service if times are being missed so readily in these busy, built-up areas.”

The longest wait a patient had for an ambulance in Shropshire last year was seven hours.

The patient, who was in the TF3 postcode in Telford, waited six hours, 59 minutes and 12 seconds for an ambulance to arrive because there were no available crews due to hospital delays.

The patient, a 49-year-old male, was classified as a category four patient – which is classed as non-urgent.

Councillor Lee Chapman, chairman of the committee, said some of the response times in the county – including a 44-minute wait for a Category One (urgent) call in Ludlow were “abysmal”.

He said: “If the ambulance response times were published on RightMove, nobody would ever move to Shropshire.

“The 44-minute category one call in Ludlow could, I assume, not have ended well. It is abysmal.”

Another patient, a 59-year-old female in the Telford Tf1 postcode, rated as category three had to wait five hours, 38 minutes and six seconds, although no reason was recorded for the delay.

Pippa Wall, head of strategic planning at West Midlands Ambulance Service, said the trust was “doing absolutely everything we can to boost response numbers” in the county.

She said: “I accept what has been said but we are doing our best with the resources we have in a rural county like Shropshire.

“We only have a certain number of vehicles in Shropshire and if one of those vehicles, even from a relatively urban area, is pulled away, it can be a long way away and take a long time to arrive back.

“There are not many trusts with as many vehicles as we have. We are always doing our best with the resources available to us. 

“We find in Shropshire that people are less willing to call us – even when they do genuinely need us – compared to more urban areas.

“They feel guilty for calling us quite often, especially as it can lead to a long journey to hospital.”