A PARISH councillor has put out a plea to emergency services to upgrade their control room systems which are unable to locate some properties on a new housing estate.

Margaret Flint, an Upper Rissington Parish councillor said that on three recent occasions ambulances had ended up driving onto Lancaster Drive in the village where she lives because their navigation systems could not find the nearby Victory Fields housing estate.

She said that the system needs to be addressed urgently.

She said: “This could be a matter of life or death to someone. It is a matter of urgency. Their system needs to be upgraded.

“Someone needs to pull their finger out and get their navigation system upgraded.”

“We do not even have mobile phone signal up here, it is too remote here and this issue needs to be taken seriously.”

She added that residents living in Victory Fields, which was built last year, had no issues receiving their mail from Royal Mail and that it was just the emergency services who do not appear to have the correct postcodes on their system.

A spokesman for South Western Ambulance Service responded to Cllr Flint's comments by saying that not all the postcodes at Victory Fields had been updated onto control room systems but it was an issue the service was working on.

She said: “Many of the addresses within Victory Fields have already been manually updated, with work continuing to add the remaining properties.

“Our control room maps are updated every three months, with additional manual updates when information is received from local councils. We also ensure our satellite navigation systems are updated on a monthly basis to support our frontline staff and enable them to get to the right place, in the right time.

“Our computer systems are automatically able to locate callers from most landlines, which means on many occasions we can get an ambulance on its way before we’ve even spoken to you.

“Our call-handlers all receive refresher training to ensure they have all the necessary support and skills to gain as much location information as possible, even while handling the most distressing and traumatic calls.”