The man who runs the ambulance service covering Epping Forest has blamed "intolerable" delays in handing over patients at hospital for slow emergency response times.

Last month 757 patients waited for more than an hour in an ambulance after arriving at accident and emergency departments in Essex.

Anthony Marsh, chief executive of the East of England Ambulance Service, said crews are unable to respond to emergency calls because they are waiting at hospitals.

There were 7,209 incidents where handovers took 15 minutes or more at Essex’s five A&E departments.

Dr Marsh, in a report to the board, said: “We are experiencing significant pressures from other parts of the healthcare system.

“The delays in hospital handover preventing ambulances from responding to further patients are reaching intolerable levels.

“The delays are outside of our control, but prevent us from responding to the next emergency call we may be holding.”

Dr Marsh said the ambulance trust had lost the equivalent of seven ambulance shifts per day to handover delays in 2014.

Government targets require ambulance services to respond to 75 per cent of high priority emergency calls, known as red 1 and red 2, within eight minutes.

The target has been missed in Essex every month since April.