THE ambulance service in North and East Yorkshire is set for another shake-up under plans to create two new trusts in the region.

Union officials say they are shocked by the proposals which would see the merger of three existing ambulance trusts - Tees East and North Yorkshire Ambulance Service (TENYAS), West Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service (WYMAS) and North East Ambulance Service (NEAS).

The changes come just three years after TENYAS was formed out of Cleveland, Humberside and North Yorkshire Ambulance Service, and NEAS was formed from Durham and Northumbria ambulance services.

The board of TENYAS met yesterday to discuss the issue and agreed to ask Health Secretary Alan Milburn to consult on the proposal.

Unison officers had been expecting the creation of a Yorkshire Ambulance Service to include South Yorkshire, but in the long-term.

A spokesman for TENYAS said that if the plans go ahead it would involve staff from North and East Yorkshire joining WYMAS and staff from Teesside joining NEAS to create two new trusts.

He said: "The proposal is subject to a 14-point resolution agreed by the board and dealing with such issues as maintenance and improvement of response times, staff issues, support from Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities.

"If agreement to consult is given, the next step will be for the Trusts to jointly prepare and agree a full consultation paper. It would be at the that point that the board would take a view on whether it was prepared to support such a proposition."

Ray Gray, regional officer for Unison, said the proposals could dent staff morale, although he would work as hard as ever to ensure any changes did not affect patients.

He said: "We have never been adverse to mergers, we can see the logic of having one set of board members, one set of management, one chief executive and one finance department - all of that makes sense. But we need time to plan that."

Updated: 12:15 Friday, June 28, 2002