Number of hoax calls made to paramedics in the north east this year revealed

There's been 14 hoax calls made to the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) in the north east so far this year.

The calls, all between January and August, wasted just over 390 minutes of resource time, or about six and a half hours.

Paramedics in the Grampian healthboard spent an average of 27 minutes and 52 seconds at each call.

Greater Glasgow and Clyde had the highest figures with 87 hoax calls, second was Lothian with 37.

Across Scotland there were 219 malicious calls in the first eight months of the year, 28 more than the whole of last year.

They resulted in 236 vehicles spending 130 hours at each call.

One of them included a person claiming they had been stabbed, only for the crew to arrive and find no sign of any patient.

Earlier this year, a woman was also fined £210 for making hoax calls to SAS, after calling ambulances when she did not require them.

Since 2017 there has been 2,620 hoax calls.

Michael Dickson, SAS chief executive, said: “Anyone who calls 999 without a genuine need is putting lives at risk by diverting crews that could be needed to respond to a life-threatening incident.

“We work with the police to report malicious, or nuisance callers and encourage the public to help us. Hoax calls are no joke.”