Hospital capacity, roadworks and queuing before making it into A&E are just some of the problems facing the ambulance service, according to Londoners.

Earlier today the London Assembly Health Committee met members of the public to discuss issues they feel are facing the London Ambulance Service (LAS).

Conservative assembly member Susan Hall asked participants what they thought some of the biggest challenges were to the ambulance service in the capital.

One member of the public from Hillington Health Watch said that there wasn’t “sufficient staffing” to deal with ambulance services that arrived at hospitals.

In week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve last year 16,900 people were stuck in the backs of ambulances waiting to enter an A&E unit.

Another Londoner added: “There are lots of hours lost by ambulances queuing outside hospitals for a long-time.”

London’s is the busiest ambulance service in the country. It handled over 1.8 million emergency calls from across London in 2016/17 and attended more than 1.1 million incidents.

But there have been growing concerns for a number of years about its performance, which led to the LAS Trust being placed in special measures in 2015 following a Care Quality Commission review.

The trust was taken out of special measures early in 2018.

Throughout the meeting residents of London continued to voice their concerns about the problems with the service.

One resident said: “There need to be more bursaries given for the training of paramedics and greater training given to people about ringing 101 instead of 999 in emergencies.”

But another resident was quick to say: “You can have as many paramedics or ambulances as you want but there’s not enough capacity in hospitals.”

A paramedic from the LSA said the main problem she faced when working was traffic and roadworks in central London.

She added: “People can’t necessarily move out of the way of ambulances because of there’s nowhere to move to.”

Other concerns raised included the blurring of lines of what the ambulance service’s role should be.

One particular woman said she felt that a lot of time the LSA was doing “social services” job and added “that’s not what the ambulance service is about”.

A resident from Ealing added: “Quite often ambulances been sent to care homes and there are a lot of complex issues around whether ambulances should be used for people with mental health problems and elderly people who fall.”