One in three emergency ambulance calls in Huddersfield runs late.

Huddersfield health chiefs were told that 358 urgent calls missed the NHS eight-minute response time in August.

But the one-in-three Huddersfield figures are the third best in West Yorkshire.

Health officials have said that no patients have died or come to serious harm because of the delays.

Ambulance chiefs have blamed a surge in the level of 999 calls.

Members of the board at Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Group (GHCCG) were told the late ambulances were Red 1 and 2 category calls.

Red 1 calls are for the most serious life threatening incidents such as heart attacks and patients who are not breathing or have no pulse.

Red 2 calls are deemed serious and potentially life threatening but less immediately time critical and cover conditions such as stroke and fits.

Just under two thirds of calls in August – 654 – were on time.

Figures show the Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) has not met its target of arriving at 75% of Red calls within eight minutes so far this financial year.

Its ‘year to date’ rolling total is 73.4% for Red 1 calls and 67.4% for Red 2 calls.

GHCCG said it was seeking assurances from YAS that a plan for improvement was in place after the deterioration in performance.

YAS has struggled to meet the target for many years.

A spokeswoman for the ambulance service said: “Overall demand for emergency ambulances is increasing year-on-year and this is reflected across the whole country.

“In Yorkshire and the Humber demand for the most seriously ill and injured patients (‘Red’ incidents) is up by 11.5% which equates to nearly 15,000 more ‘Red’ incidents in the year-to-date (April to September 2014).

“In the Greater Huddersfield area there have been over 500 more ‘Red’ incidents than the same period last year.

“Whilst we are working hard to make further improvements to our response times, it is important to remember that they are not the only measure of the care we provide to patients and our focus remains on providing a safe and high-quality emergency service.

“In the last year we have seen a 43% improvement in survival to discharge in patients who have collapsed due to cardiac causes.

“In patient terms, 124 patients have walked out of hospitals following a cardiac arrest due to the high standard of care provided by our staff.”

Martin Pursey, head of contracting and procurement for GHCCG, said monthly meetings were being held to review ambulance response times and improvement measures were already in place.

He added: “YAS review all delayed responses weekly and any case in which a patient may have suffered harm is investigated in detail by clinical staff.

“The results of these investigations are shared with CCGs. At this point in time under-performance has not been identified as the root cause of any serious incidents or deaths.”

More ambulance crews were on duty at weekends and evenings and clinical staff had been posted to 999 call centres to advise on ambulance despatch.

Unison’s Yorkshire Ambulance Branch called for more to be done to tackle delays including enhanced training for staff.