UNITE has called on the Scottish Ambulance Service to declare a major incident at all hospitals where accident and emergency (A&E) turnaround times exceed 30 minutes.

The union has raised concerns that patient safety is being put at risk by Scotland’s long A&E waiting times.

On average, an ambulance response can take between 55 minutes and one hour, 10 minutes from call to completion, but they are now taking six hours due to “system overload.”