OUR ambulance service may be still some way from reaching its destination, but there are signs it is on the right road.

Taken in isolation, the Tees East and North Yorkshire Ambulance Trust (TENYAS) league table position is grim. You cannot get any worse than zero marks, and the trust is one of only five bumping along the bottom.

Its response rate remains a real cause for concern. Not meeting 75 per cent of emergency calls within eight minutes is a failure of the trust's core responsibility.

That 75 per cent target should be viewed as the absolute minimum, with the ambulance service striving to reach a far higher standard.

It goes without saying that minutes matter in the life-saving business. Not reaching a quarter of the population within eight minutes may be officially considered acceptable; but any organisation which takes pride in its public service would expect more of itself.

Nevertheless, we must put the bad tidings in context. North Yorkshire Ambulance Service hit rock bottom a few years back with television allegations of bullying, a damning official report and resignations at the top.

After the disruption of the merger, ambulance emergency response times were way short of target, at a disgraceful 55 per cent.

The service exceeded the 75 per cent target a couple of years ago, so it is disappointing to see standards slip again. But it missed by only 0.2 per cent, despite what was described as "an unremitting rise in our A&E workload".

Talk of bosses facing the sack is premature: the chief executive Jayne Barnes has only been in the job a month. What the trust needs now is stability at the top, allowing its performance to improve to match that of the best ambulance services in Britain.

Meanwhile, York Hospital has again won top marks, again raising the prospect of its becoming a foundation hospital. Whatever your opinion of that possibility, we should salute York NHS Hospital Trust staff for providing a three-star service.

Updated: 11:15 Wednesday, July 16, 2003