Only five ambulance stations in the Highlands and Islands are to be double-crewed 24 hours a day, the Free Press has been told.

Under a controversial “traffic light” system imposed by Scottish Ambulance Service headquarters in Edinburgh, the five “red-lighted” stations are Inverness, Dingwall, Tain, Alness and Fort William. However, the rest of the stations — some two dozen in total — are to be “green-lighted”, it has been claimed. This means that they can be single-manned as a matter of routine if there are not enough staff to cover shifts. Single-manned ambulances are legally barred from transporting casualties to hospital.

A source within the service maintained that managers are prepared to let the “green-lighted” stations be single-manned if staff refuse to work additional unpaid shifts on top of their agreed overtime. Claims that staff are being “bullied and blackmailed” into working the unpaid on-call shifts were due to be discussed at a trade union meeting in Inverness yesterday (Wednesday).

The source also claimed that the traffic light system has been adopted by headquarters in an attempt to reduce an overspend in the Highlands and Islands of some £470,000.

Last week it was alleged that service managers drafted in, at considerable expense, two senior officers from Lewis and Fort William to cover the unmanned Kyle ambulance station for two days rather than address the root causes of the dispute.

The source added: “Headquarters are completely immune to criticism about what is happening to the service. They don’t seem to care about rural areas at all and are content to run the service here on a shoestring budget.”

A spokesman for the SAS said the traffic light system was “by no means finalised” and that discussions with staff were ongoing. “We discussed it with staff at last week’s partnership meeting,” he added.

Two senior staff were drafted in to cover at Kyle, the spokesman said, but the cost of this was “considerably less” than covering these shifts with overtime. He also maintained that the north-west division of the service was £178,000 in the red for the last financial year, not £470,000.