South Central Ambulance Service has said it has made improvements to response times after the death of a three-day-old baby. 

Wyllow-Raine Swinburn, of Hagbourne Road, Didcot, died after her mum spent eight minutes waiting for someone to answer a 999 call.

A coroner gave a narrative conclusion at an inquest yesterday (December 2) and said that the ambulance response time of 30 minutes did not contribute to the baby's death. 

A spokesperson for SCAS said: “On behalf of South Central Ambulance Service we offer our sincere condolences to Wyllow-Raine’s family. Losing a child is something that no parent should ever have to experience, and we recognise that waiting so long for their call to be answered and for the ambulance to arrive must have been awful and it is not the service that we aim to deliver.

READ MORE: Mother calls for review after baby dies following 30-minute ambulance wait

South Central Ambulance Service (Image: Contributed) "Our internal review identified that there were no missed opportunities to either answer the call or for an ambulance to be dispatched at an earlier time. 

“Our regrettable response time was due to the significant demand that we were experiencing at the time.

“We hope that the evidence provided by both independent experts instructed by HM Coroner that the delays did not cause or contribute to Wyllow-Raine’s death offers her family some comfort.

“Since September 2022, we have undertaken a number of service improvements to increase our ability to respond to patients in a timely manner. 

“This includes increasing the number of emergency call takers we employ, reducing the average call delay from 50 seconds in September 2022 to 10 seconds by September 2024, and introducing new processes in partnership with local hospitals to ensure that ambulance crews are not delayed by more than 45 minutes once they arrive at hospital with a patient so we have more crews available to respond to the most serious emergencies more quickly.

“Whilst this does not change the experience for Wyllow-Raine’s family, we hope that they recognise that we are doing everything that we can to try and ensure that no other family goes through the same experience as they did.”

Professor Andrew Brent, chief medical officer at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, added: “On behalf of the trust, I would like to offer my deepest sympathies to Wyllow-Raine’s family. 

“We have carefully considered what could be learned from this tragic case and, although we have not identified anything that could have prevented Wyllow-Raine’s death, we have identified some areas for learning which will enable us to improve further the care we deliver to babies in the future.”