IT problems at an ambulance control room meant no one was able to access a public defibrillator to help a patient suffering a fatal cardiac arrest, it has emerged.

South East Coast Ambulance Trust says the incident raised “serious issues” about how it manages the potentially life-saving devices, which can be used to shock the heart back to a normal rhythm.

On that occasion, the computer system failed but the 999 call taker had not been trained in how to manually obtain the access code to pass on to the caller.

Action has since been taken to ensure all staff know the procedure, according to board papers.

The incident has come to light as the Trust nears the end of a clinical review to see if any patients were harmed due to problems locating defibrillators.

A technical fault has been identified which means control room computers are sometimes unable to pinpoint the whereabouts of the devices within 200m.

It is something which may have affected more than 5,500 of Red 1 and 2 emergency calls - the most urgent categories - since 2013.

The issue is one of a number of problems with the trust’s computer aided dispatch (CAD) software, set to be replaced next year, which is used to manage and deploy front-line resources.

Other glitches include the mapping systems in ambulances failing, leaving crews to locate addresses using apps on their mobile phones and control room staff having to use radios to give instructions due to failures in the on-board systems.

In some cases dispatchers trying to send ambulances to emergencies found they were not where they were expected to be due to instructions not getting through.

A bid to fix the issues this week meant call takers, who deal with around 2,000 999 calls every day, resorted to pen and paper, taking down details of emergencies manually for several hours on Monday while a planned reboot took place.

A Trust spokesman assured members of the public they would not see any difference in the way the service was run, adding: “We are aware of the significant issues we face with our CAD system, as outlined previously in our board papers and elsewhere.

“We are committed to improving the performance of our CAD and recognise the frustration and stress that these issues have on staff.”

Board papers from September showed that partial outages of the CAD system were taking place on a weekly basis since March.

Timeline

December 2014 to February 2015 - Trust puts in place a controversial pilot where it deliberately delayed thousands of NHS 111 calls before they were transferred to the 999 number in a bid to help the service meet its response time targets

October 2015 - Health regulator Monitor criticises SECAmb for the project, which increased how long some patients were waiting for ambulances

March 2016 - Deloitte report says the “high risk and sensitive” pilot was implemented without adequately assessing its impact on patients, and criticises SECAmb governance

March 2016 - Trust chairman Tony Thorne resigns

May 2016 - Chief executive Paul Sutton leaves his post

September 2016 - Care Quality Commission rates trust as inadequate and recommends it is placed in special measures

October 2016 - SECAmb publishes Patient Impact Review which finds no evidence that patients were harmed because of the pilot