The East of England Ambulance Trust spent more than £9 million on private ambulances last year, it has been revealed.

The trust used the money to pay for private ambulances which were sent to 999 calls and to transport patients in non-urgent cases.

A study by PA news agency showed England's ambulance trusts spent more than £92 million in the last year on the services.

The data, from a Freedom of Information request, showed the East of England Ambulance Trust spent £9,535,027 on private ambulances for 999 and non-urgent work in 2018/19, double the £4,791,155 the year before.

Some 26,428 incidents in 2018/19 involved a private ambulance being required, up from 12,947 the year before.

Private ambulances were sent to 5.21 per cent of all 999 incidents in 2018/19, up from 2.59 per cent the year before.

The trust said it had hired hundreds of new staff but used private ambulances for overtime and spikes in demand, such as in winter.

The figures also showed the trust spent £679,494 on taxis in 2018/19 - down from £885,024 the year before.

In a statement the trust said: "Over the last few years, the trust has hired hundreds of new staff to improve the service for our patients and to meet growing demand.

"As well as overtime, we use private ambulance services as a flexible resource to meet spikes in demand, such as winter when we see far more demand.

"It takes three years to qualify as a paramedic and we use private services to fill gaps in budgeted capacity whilst student paramedics complete their university studies and whilst we fill vacancies.

"Recruiting trained staff, particularly registered paramedics, is extremely challenging and whilst we continue to recruit and train a significant number of patient facing staff we continue to use private ambulance services so that we can respond to patients as quickly as possible and give them the best possible service.

"Like the vast majority of UK ambulance services, we use Care Quality Commission (CQC) registered private ambulance services so that we can respond to patients as quickly as possible.

"Alongside the requirement to be officially CQC accredited, each provider we use is also subject to our own internal approval processes and regular quality reviews."