AMBULANCE chiefs have been slammed for wasting money on perks and payouts while the service struggles.

Whistleblowers claim the trust appears to be willing to spend money on luxury cars for senior staff despite not having enough ambulances.

They claim generous redundancy packages are being paid out before former employees are then re-hired via agencies.

And fleets of private ambulances are filling service gaps at a cost of about £10,000-a-day.

The revelations follow a series of Freedom of Information requests by the Sunday People to the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust.

At the same time the trust is failing to get to patients quickly enough, missing its response targets and still has to make more savings while at time when the number of emergency calls are increasing all the time.

It is reported six members of staff who received almost £1million in redundancy payouts have been re-hired.

One paramedic, who was employed as a trainer before taking redundancy, is working for the trust again as a trainer but now via an outside agency.

His salary stayed the same, with the benefit of a sizeable publicly funded redundancy package in the bank.

The others are employed casually or via outside firms.

A whistleblower told the Sunday People the "crazy waste of money" is no mistake because "somebody sanctioned these redundancy payments even though they knew this person would be needed for staff training".

Dia Chakravarty, from the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "It is absolutely ludicrous that taxpayers pick up the tab for generous redundancy packages only to see those that have been let go re-hired soon after."

About £6million has been paid out on management redundancies during the past two years.

At the same time Chief Executive Robert Morton was given a Ranger Rover Sport on top of his more than £140,000-a-year salary and other staff were given Jaguars and BMWs with £454,000 in lease payments on 81 cars.

And while the trust has many to spend on executive cars it does not have enough ambulances with spending of about £10,000-a-day on private ambulance fleets being reported.

Between July 2015 and January 2016 there was more than £2million spent on the private fleet with the service bill costing more than half a million pounds.

Hundreds of paramedics have resigned due to the increasing pressure of the job.

Every year the number of calls, now averaging about 3,000 every day, are increasing.

And so far this year the trust is failing to reach the most at risk patients in time.

A national target of getting to 75 per cent of Red One and Red Two calls within eight minutes has been set.

Red One calls are life threatening cardiac arrests and Red Two are other life threatening emergencies.

The trust is at 61 per cent and 55 per cent.

It is also missing its 19 minute second target.

An "extraordinary" increase in demand for ambulances has been blamed for a trust's poor performance.

A spokesman said: "Ambulance performance across England has been in decline for a number of years due to the national workforce shortage, significant handover delays at hospitals and an extraordinary increase in activity, in particular, the higher acuity cases which are benchmarked against the eight-minute target."

He continued: "We have experienced an unprecedented increase in demand.

"In north east Essex, we have seen an increase of more than 2,000 calls from April 1 to June 26 compared to the same period last year.

"In 2015/16 we handled more than one million calls, the most in our ten-year existence."

The trust also urged people to think carefully about whether they need an ambulance.

A spokesman defended its spending, although the trust declined to comment on the practice of making staff redundant, handing out substantial payouts, and then hiring them back to do the same job via agencies.

The spokesman said: "A vast restructure invested more money into front-line staffing – this included a combination of reducing the spend on agency and interim staff and restructuring of support services and leadership arrangements.

"A number of voluntary and compulsory redundancies reinvested about £10million savings in ongoing pay costs into front line services.

"All redundancies and the associated once-off costs were overseen and signed off by the Trust Development Authority."

The trust also defended its spending on executive cars.

A spokesman said: "The majority of the lease cars for clinically qualified managers are for blue-light responding ambulance officers or managers.

"Such lease cars are fitted with blue lights and sirens so that they can respond to patients in their community, manage the scene at serious or major incidents, or respond to on-call duties in an emergency or major incident situation.

"In relation to specific models of cars, the trust allows a set level of expenditure so managers can make a contribution for the car of their choice if it is over that set level."

He added the use of private ambulance fleets would continue until they can fill the "clinical capacity gap" by recruiting and training enough paramedics and getting enough ambulances.

AN extraordinary increase in demand for ambulances has been blamed for a trust's poor performance.

The East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust has been accused of struggling to cope while at the same time wasting money.

A spokesman said: "Ambulance performance across England has been in decline for a number of years due to the national workforce shortage, significant handover delays at hospitals and an extraordinary increase in activity, in particular, the higher acuity cases which are benchmarked against the eight-minute target."

He continued: "We have experienced an unprecedented increase in demand.

"In north east Essex, we have seen an increase of more than 2,000 calls from April 1 to June 26 compared to the same period last year.

"In 2015/16 we handled more than one million calls, the most in our ten-year existence."

The trust also urged people to think carefully about whether they need an ambulance.

A spokesman defended its spending, although the trust declined to comment on the practice of making staff redundant, handing out substantial payouts, and then hiring them back to do the same job via agencies.

The spokesman said: "A vast restructure invested more money into front-line staffing – this included a combination of reducing the spend on agency and interim staff and restructuring of support services and leadership arrangements.

"A number of voluntary and compulsory redundancies reinvested about £10million savings in ongoing pay costs into front line services.

"All redundancies and the associated once-off costs were overseen and signed off by the Trust Development Authority."

The trust also defended its spending on executive cars.

A spokesman said: "The majority of the lease cars for clinically qualified managers are for blue-light responding ambulance officers or managers.

"Such lease cars are fitted with blue lights and sirens so that they can respond to patients in their community, manage the scene at serious or major incidents, or respond to on-call duties in an emergency or major incident situation.

"In relation to specific models of cars, the trust allows a set level of expenditure so managers can make a contribution for the car of their choice if it is over that set level."

He added the use of private ambulance fleets would continue until they can fill the "clinical capacity gap" by recruiting and training enough paramedics and getting enough ambulances.