THE London Ambulance Service has been placed in special measures after inspectors rated it “inadequate”.

It is the first ambulance trust in the country to receive the action from the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

A culture of harassment and bullying was found to exist, and many staff were not being properly supported to do their jobs.

Professor Sir Mike Richards, Chief Inspector of Hospitals, said in many cases, there was a lack of properly trained staff and equipment.

He said: "I am recommending that London Ambulance Service be placed into special measures because I believe that this is the step necessary to ensure that this vital service - which provides emergency medical services to 8.6 million Londoners - gets the support it needs to improve.

"The trust has been performing poorly on response times since March 2014. This is a very serious problem, which the trust clearly isn’t able to address alone, and which needs action to put right.

"The leadership of LAS has told us that they have already taken action to address the issues we have raised, and we will be monitoring the service closely to ensure this continues.”

Inspectors found patients were treated with compassion, dignity and respect by staff, often in difficult and distressing situations. Ambulance staff were dedicated and proud of their work, while being open about the issues they faced.

Although the trust delivered caring services, improvements were needed on safety, effectiveness, responsiveness and leadership.

Sir Mike Richards added: "While we do have significant concerns about the performance of the ambulance service, I want to provide Londoners with some reassurance.

“Firstly, that once care arrives, it is of a good standard - and dedicated and caring call handlers, drivers, paramedics and other frontline staff are working hard to ensure this.

“And secondly, that urgent steps are being taken - and improvements have already been made - to ensure that everyone who relies on this service receives excellent, timely care and that London has the ambulance service it deserves."

Fionna Moore, chief executive of the trust, said: “While we are pleased that our caring and compassionate staff have been recognised in this report, we are sorry we have fallen short of some of the standards CQC and Londoners expect of us.

“As the newly appointed chief executive, I am, along with my leadership team, completely focussed on addressing the challenges highlighted in this report.

“We accept that we need to improve the way we measure and monitor some important standards and processes but we would like to reassure Londoners that we always prioritise our response to our most critically ill and injured patients and, in the event of a major incident, we are ready to respond and CQC recognise this.”