PARAMEDICS can now spend more time saving lives after solar panels were fitted to their vehicles. South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust has installed the panels on 36 of its rapid response vehicles.

It means the medical equipment in the cars – often first on the scene of serious incidents – does not need to be charged at HQ or by leaving the engine running.

The panels supply power to a secondary battery system to power emergency equipment including the blue flashing lights.

The trust is also to trial the panels on an ambulance.

Trust green team co-ordinator Brian Miller said: “The use of solar panels means that the trust’s fleet of rapid response vehicles can be fully mobile at all times to provide the best in mobile healthcare services to patients suffering life threatening injury or illness.”

The trust, which has to find savings totalling £30m over the next five years, said the initiative will help it deal with a rise in demand.

It has to get to “immediately life-threatening” calls within eight minutes at least 75 per cent of the time and to those of a “life-threatening nature” within 19 minutes 95 per cent of the time.

In Oxfordshire, this was 77.1 per cent and 95.2 per cent respectively in the 12 months from April 2012.