A CLENT councillor and former ambulance worker is demanding answers as to why the crash that killed 22-year-old villager Tom Pople was only labelled a category B call-out.

West Midlands Ambulance Service says an emergency team from Stourbridge arrived in Belbroughton Road at the scene of the smash, where Tom died at the road side, within 15 minutes of receiving the 999 call.

Under Government guidelines though, the most serious emergency calls (category A) are meant to be answered within eight minutes.

The service - however - says it was well within its target for a category B incident, which allows paramedics to arrive up to 19 minutes after a 999 call is made.

But Tom’s grieving family and angry former medic - Clent parish and district councillor Margaret Sherrey - want to know why the former Haybridge High student’s tragic final moments were not a top priority that night.

Cllr Sherrey, who was a frontline member of the London Ambulance Service’s accident team in the 60s, said: “I’m horrified to hear they grade 999 calls. I’d like to know how they qualify for these A and B calls.”

Tom’s sister Jess told the News: “If they’d got there sooner he would have been alive, maybe they could have done something. He might have stood a chance. They shouldn’t have classed it as a B - they knew how serious it was.”

Tom’s devastated mum Gillian said: “I just don’t understand who decides what’s A and what’s B.”

A spokesman for West Midlands Ambulance Service said category A calls for “very severe, urgent calls”.

When asked what category B meant - she said all calls were graded according to the information provided.

She said: “Obviously we try and attend all incidents as quickly as possible.

“Categories depend on the information we get from the caller. A lot of Road Traffic Accidents are category B calls. It depends on the severity of the call.

“In this case we received the call just before 12.05am and we got there just before 12.20am. The caller had initially told us the patient was conscious and breathing.”

Cllr Sherrey, however, suspects Government targets are really to blame for the ratings.

She said: “I think it’s disgusting. We didn’t have any of these awful targets in my day.”