Ambulances are taking longer to reach patients suffering from life-threatening conditions compared to three years ago, according to a new report.
Figures from NHS England suggest that in some areas of the UK, heart attack and stroke victims have to wait almost three minutes more to be seen by a paramedic.
Category A calls where a patient's life is in danger should arrive within eight minutes. But ambulances are taking more than a minute longer to arrive on average and experts warn this is putting lives at risk.
Dr Dale Webb, director of research and information at the Stroke Association, said: "When a stroke strikes, the blood supply to part of your brain is cut off which causes brain cells in the affected area to die.
Paramedic Danny Wroe says increases in traffic are causing longer delays "So time lost is brain lost. These figures are a concern because stroke patients need to get specialist treatment as soon as possible.
"The quicker someone arrives at a specialist stroke unit the quicker they should receive the right treatment and the more likely they are to make a better recovery."
In the East of England, ambulances are taking some 2.8 minutes longer to respond to the most serious calls. In the East Midlands, ambulances are taking 2.3 minutes longer compared to three years ago.
But an East Midlands Ambulance Service spokesperson cast doubt on the data.
''EMAS is an improving organisation and hit all of its key performance standards during the first quarter of 2014," he said.
One trust is recruiting more staff like Danny to help with response times ''The method used nationally to measure response times changed between years so the figures quoted do not compare like with like.
"The figure of 489 seconds for May 2014 uses the new criteria and is correct. However, if the new measurement criteria were applied to the May 2013 figure, it would read 476 rather than 376.
"This means the change from 2013 to 2014 is 13 seconds."
Portsmouth-based paramedic Danny Wroe told Sky News: "Traffic is on the increase and people's inability to use their mirrors is a major thing."
The chief executive of the East of England Ambulance Service said the service was dealing with delays by recruiting extra paramedics and putting additional ambulances on the road.
Dr Anthony Marsh said: "We are putting more staff on the front line and reducing the number of cars to increase the number of ambulances.
"We are recruiting 400 student paramedics by April 2015, the first group of which are already working from ambulance stations across the region, as well as up-skilling our existing emergency medical technicians and emergency care assistants.
"Additional ambulances are also on the road, and we launched a replacement programme to ensure no ambulance in our fleet is older than five years by next spring."
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