Administrators at South East Coast Ambulance Service have apologised for excessive response times as new figures revealed they have received more than 2,000 emergency calls a day on average since January.

The trust, which covers Kent, Surrey and Sussex, received 30,000 more calls between January 1 and June 19 this year than in the same period last year, seeing a total of 350,000 calls.

From May: Head of South East Coast Ambulance Service trust (SECAmb) leaves two months after "fundamental failures" in 111 pilot scheme

In addition to high demand, the trust has also apologised for delays at hospitals which “severely impact on the trust’s ability to respond to patients as quickly as it would like”.

Last month former chief executive Paul Sutton left his post after taking a mutual leave of absence from the trust. An independent report by Deliotte revealed he had ordered the clock that measures response times to be reset.

The report said the "CEO made the ultimate decision to proceed with the pilot and played a critical leadership role throughout".

The pilot scheme which ran from December 2014 to February 2015 allowed emergency Red 2 and other calls to be “re-triaged”.

Red 2 calls mean a patient is in a life-threatening emergency and is the second most urgent category.

Additionally, the changes to the Red 2 clock start times were not in line with nationally-agreed operating standards, which require a response time within eight minutes.

Acting chief executive Geraint Davies said on Tuesday: “I want to reassure the public that improving our performance in spite of these challenges and improving the service we provide to all our patients is my top priority.

“We are very aware that there are some significant improvements which we need to address, as was highlighted with our recent CQC inspection.

"We were aware and already taking action to address many of these issues and that work will continue so that we provide our patients with the service they rightly expect and deserve and so that our staff feel valued as they perform such a challenging role.”