WORRYING ambulance response times in rural areas are going unnoticed, an influential MP has warned.

Graham Stuart, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Rural Services said regional data aggregation often masked poor response times in rural areas.

The Beverley & Holderness MP said he looked into the issue following complaints from constituents poor ambulance response times in Holderness.

"The information I received was worrying," he said.

On the surface, the Yorkshire Ambulance Service was performing responding to 78% of category A calls in under eight minutes – above the national quality indicator of 75%.

But when the data was analysed, the town of Beverley was meeting the eight minute bench mark 82% of the time while emergency calls in rural Mid-Holderness were only met 48% of the time.

"Urban areas have a higher number of calls that are easier to get to and this essentially masks rural performance data," Mr Stuart told the Politics Home website.

Mr Stuart said he had since met the chief executive of the Yorkshire Ambulance Service and visited ambulance stations across the constituency to speak to frontline staff.

The aim was to find out how they felt the service could strike a balance between ambulances arriving quickly to the more frequent urban calls and improving response times to rural calls.

A number of issues included delays in handing over patients at hospitals, ambulances being called out unnecessarily and resources being moved out of area to meet targets elsewhere.

Mr Stuart said his investigations also led him to the work of Community First Responder (CFR) teams – volunteers who are enlisted and trained by the Ambulance Service.

"If an ambulance is called to an adult in a state of collapse then the ambulance service will mobilise CFR teams at the same time as dispatching an ambulance," he said.

Team members are equipped with oxygen and defibrillation machines.

"In a rural area they are usually able to get to the patient ahead of an ambulance and begin early lifesaving skills," said Mr Stuart. "This can be critical in the chain of survival."

Mr Stuart said when he matched the response times data with the location of CFR teams, he found that the area with the worst response times had no CFR team members.

"There is no national guidance on the use of CFR volunteers and each ambulance service has developed its own approach," he said.

"I want to see the encouragement of more CFR teams as well as a rebalancing of priorities so rural areas do not lose out in pursuit of national targets."

The Rural Services Network provides the secretariat for the APPG on Rural Services.