I recently attended a forum organised by the South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) in order to find out more about what they do and how well they do it.

It was an interesting afternoon.

SCAS is a large organisation covering counties including Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, West Berkshire and Hampshire and have a total of 3,000 staff covering a population of over 4.6 million people including the Queen – when she is at Windsor– and the Prime Minister –when she is at Chequers.

They answer both 999 and 111 telephone calls and drive more than 600 vehicles across the service's area.

If you ring 999 there are three types of treatment programmes depending what is wrong.

These are ‘hear and treat’, ‘see and treat’ and ‘see, treat and convey’.

Hear and treat is the telephone advice that callers who do not have serious or life threatening conditions receive from an ambulance service after calling 999.

They may receive advice on how to care for themselves or where they might go to receive assistance.

See and treat is when patients with manageable conditions such as epilepsy, asthma, diabetes with non-serious complications can be managed at home by an ambulance crew, without a trip to the hospital.

This reduces unnecessary pressures on busy A&E departments and means patients can stay at home.

See, treat and convey is when patients are taken to either local emergency departments or specialist centres depending on the situation.

Emergency 999 calls are prioritised to ensure that the most life threatening cases receive the quickest response and there are national targets for response times.

Red 1 is the most time critical, where patients are not breathing or do not have a pulse.

The national target is that 75 per cent of calls must be responded to within eight minutes.

SCAS was top performing ambulance trust for March 2017 with 75 per cent, the only one to achieve the target.

England's average was 70.7 per cent

Red 2 is where the situation is still serious, but less immediately time critical, like strokes or fits.

The target is the same. 75 per cent must be responded to within eight minutes.

SCAS was top performing ambulance trust for March 17 with 73.3 per cent –- England average was 61.7 per cent.

Red 19 is when the patient requires transport in a life threatening situation.

An ambulance should arrive on scene within 19 minutes 95 per cent of the time.

SCAS (95.1 per cent) and the London Ambulance Service (95.4 per cent) were the only services to exceed the target in March – England's average was 91.5%.

So we seem to be in safer hands than the rest of the country.