One of the factors which influenced my vote in the referendum was the impossibility of any meaningful democratic participation in the EU; democracy requires participation and this leads me to use the opportunities available to us to observe and participate in local decision making; hence a journey to Shirehall in Shrewsbury for the Health and Social Care Scrutiny Committee.

This committee of Shropshire Council, in current buzz words, does what it says on the tin, it raises questions on the decision-making of the local NHS as it affects the population of Shropshire.

The two agenda items for the meeting were: West Midlands Ambulance Service Performance and Integrated Community Services.

Sadly, the full value of the meeting was lost; the sound system not fully working, overheads were virtually impossible to read and none of the councillors was introduced.

However, leaving that and the Integrated Community Services presentation on one side and cherry-picking from the report of the West Midlands Ambulance Service, this is what I came away with: the WMAS performance figures for Shropshire are some of the worst in the West Midlands and they are seriously alarming, sufficiently so to create unacceptable risks of avoidable patient harm.

The call-out figures for Shropshire have deteriorated to the point where only 52.6% of Red Alert 1 Calls (the highest priority) met the national target for response times.

A very significant factor in this situation is the ‘turn around’ time for ambulances at RSH; 357 hours of ambulance crew shifts were lost by ambulances stacking up at A&E.

The WMAS representative reported that the rural nature of Shropshire was always going to make the task ‘challenging’ (nice euphemism for we can’t get the job done).

In other parts of the West Midlands it has been possible in crisis to divert seriously ill patients to nearby hospitals .

We just don’t have those nearby hospitals and if the Future Fit plan to close one Accident and Emergency Department goes ahead, our ambulance service could well go into meltdown.

Can we do anything to influence the policies?

We can read all the material on the SDONHS website, sign the petitions, lobby our MP, ask the town council to call the CCG to account at a public meeting.

I think it no exaggeration to say this is a matter of life and death.