SUPER ambulances will be taking to the streets of Swindon over the coming weeks.

The new vehicles will act as mobile hospitals that can treat patients at the scene – easing the pressure on A&E at the Great Western Hospital.

Seven vehicles, which weigh five tonnes each, will hold new medical and communication equipment and cost about £120,000 each and some are already in operation across Wiltshire.

Great Western Ambulance Service will roll out 24 more new ambulances before the end of the year.

Wiltshire will also receive one special bariatric ambulance which will be used to carry obese people – and be outfitted with strengthened stretchers, hoists, suspension and lifts.

Phil Davis, a paramedic from Swindon Ambulance Station, Queens Drive, and Unison representative, said that although he has yet to see one, the new vehicles will be a great help to him and the team.

He said: “The Government’s thinking right now is that they want to reduce waiting times at A&E departments.

“Quite a large percentage of people who go to A&E are not admitted so the Government’s thinking is that they should be treated at home.

“More space will be useful because once the stretcher goes into the current vehicles we are clambering over each other.

“The bariatric vehicles will be useful because people are getting bigger and bigger.

“It is quite normal to have someone weighing 20 to 25 stone and often they are too big to lift, so the lifts on the vehicles will be useful.”

The new fleet will be used together with newly-trained Emergency Care Practitioners, who are specially-trained to treat patients alongside paramedics at the scene of the incident. ECPs have been described as a cross between district nurses and paramedics and can be called to people’s homes, in their own cars, to provide people with anaesthetic, suturing, and practical advice to avoid future incidents.

Statistics released during GWAS AGM revealed that falls make-up 17 per cent of all incidents attended to by ambulances – which under the new system will largely be dealt with in people’s homes.

GWAS clinical director Ossie Rawstorne said: “The new vehicles offer the highest standards of infection control while helping crews to administer the treatment and care which our patients – in Swindon and across the rest of the region – expect and deserve.”

During the AGM, GWAS’s chief executive Tim Lynch said that since overseeing the merger of Wiltshire, Avon and Gloucestershire into the current ‘super trust’, response times have been lowered and the service deficit, which stood at £1.4m, has now been turned into a £1.4m surplus.

Mr Lynch recently resigned for a job elsewhere in the NHS.

A new interim chief executive, Anthony Marsh, takes over on Monday.