A MAN who suffered a stroke in Penarth this week waited more than half an hour for an ambulance to arrive - as a member of the Community Health Council claimed the Vale of Glamorgan has the worst ambulance service in Wales.

The 51-year-old from Newport was at the Penarth Times office on Stanwell Road repairing a photocopier machine when he fell ill.

When he complained of loss of feeling to the side of his face and one side of his body, staff at the office called for an ambulance.

It was later confirmed that the man, who was taken to the Prince of Wales Hospital in Bridgend, had suffered a stroke.

Staff at the office made the emergency call shortly after noon, but the ambulance did not arrive until shortly before 1pm.

The target time set for ambulance crews to arrive is eight minutes for life-threatening cases in urban areas, and 18 minutes for non life-threatening cases.

Gordon Harrop, of the Vale of Glamorgan Community Health Council, said: "The Vale of Glamorgan has the worst ambulance service in Wales by a mile in terms of response times.

"We are dismayed by the unfair variation in Emergency Ambulance Services performance across Wales. Our understanding is that the eight-minute target for an emergency response to arrive at a life-threatened patient has significance to clinical prognosis.

"Some populations in Wales are well served, unlike the Vale, and this variation is to do with distribution of resources, not overall level of resource. This must affect clinical outcomes. The people of the Vale are seriously disadvantaged.

"The Community Health Council has raised these matters through the NHS Management channels and, regrettably, has not been able to secure a satisfactory response on behalf of the people of the Vale."

Statistics published by the National Assembly for Wales for the period July 1 to September 30, 2005 show huge differences between emergency response targets met in the Vale compared with other areas of Wales.

Only 46.1 percent of Category A calls (Immediately life threatening emergency responses) were met within the eight-minute target in the Vale compared with 73.3 percent in Conway.

In the Vale 74.1 percent of Category B Calls (not reported as immediately life threatening) were met within the 14/18/21 minute targets compared with 96 per cent in Denbighshire.

A spokesperson for the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust said: "We received a 999 call at 12.18pm to attend to a man in his fifties at the Penarth Times office.

"The patient's condition was assessed via the Trust's triage system and allocated as a Category C, the lowest priority.

"For Category C calls an ambulance should be deployed as soon as possible. Unfortunately, due to a heavy demand, an ambulance was not immediately available. A second 999 call was received at 12.36pm to say the patient's condition had worsened, at which point the call was upgraded to a Category B status.