ESCALATED NHS strikes will have a “significant impact” on services, health unions warned today, after thousands more ambulance workers voted to down tools over plummeting take-home pay and understaffing.

Announcing re-ballot results, Unison said its members at another four English ambulance services and five NHS organisations, including Great Ormond Street children’s hospital, have backed walkouts for the first time in a significant escalation of the increasingly bitter dispute. 

And despite an improved wage offer from devolved Labour ministers in Wales, GMB confirmed that about 1,500 workers west of the Severn Bridge will join a strike by almost 10,000 colleagues in England on Monday after members said the proposal is “too low.”