I had a curious flashback when I attended the AGM of the Great Western Ambulance in Chippenham’s Langley Park last week. The sharp-suited young management consultant who said he had been the Chief Executive for all of eight months, but would be returning to London next week, announced that GWAS is too small to be viable. As a result they are looking at amalgamating with another ambulance service- in all probability the South West one - to create an ambulance service stretching from Cheltenham to the Scillies, from Bournemouth to Weston-Super-Mare, from Cricklade to Dartmouth.

Why the flashback? Well it was in the very same room only a matter of five years or so ago that another sharp-suited young management consultant (the present one’s predecessor by about 10) told us that the Wiltshire Ambulance Service was too small to be viable, and that a merger with Gloucestershire, Avon and Somerset to create GWAS was the magic wand which would put it all right! I disagreed with it then and said so on the grounds that I did not believe that it would work, and that it was not in the best interests of my constituents in Wiltshire.

I argued that relatively rural and far-flung areas like most of Wiltshire would lose out from any such amalgamation, since our resources would tend to be sucked into neighbouring urban areas – especially Bath and Swindon since that is where the hospitals are, and therefore where ambulances tend to land up. That was proven by my own day with the Malmesbury crew, which was spent very largely in Bath and Bristol.

So at the AGM I jumped to my feet, announced my staunch opposition to any such further amalgamation, suggesting instead two possible solutions to their apparent financial difficulties. Either they should seek to share back office costs with other ambulance services without any kind of merger being necessitated; or even they should consider working ever more closely with the Wiltshire Fire and Police Services. We are lucky in having a joint control centre for the three services in Devizes. So why not let’s see about amalgamating some of their management structures, with a view to better coordination across the County as well as potentially saving some overhead costs.

The old English County seems to me to be the right unit of government – it is just about the right size and the right population to be able to deliver local and emergency services taking proper account of local needs and characteristics. ‘Big’ in this context is by no means necessarily ‘beautiful’. Our job should be to ensure the best possible ambulance services for the people of Wiltshire. I do not believe that a South West of England Ambulance Service would achieve that, and pledge to keep up the campaign against it.