The region’s ambulance staff lost more than 150 hours to time-wasting hoax callers this year.

From January to the end of October, the East of England Ambulance Service Trust (EEAST) logged 469 calls which they classed as hoaxes – more than one a day.

The calls – which ranged from heart problems and falls to gunshots, stabbings and poisonings – saw vehicles waste 71 hours, while the total time logged from when the calls were picked up until when they were closed was 161 hours – nearly a week.

Now, with average call numbers rising as winter sets in, health chiefs are urging people to see the serious side of making prank calls.

Brett Norton, senior emergency and operations centre manager, said: “We’re an emergency service and our frontline staff are trained to save lives.

“It is unacceptable for people to misuse 999.

“We prioritise all life-threatening calls to get the quickest possible response. However, that response can be affected if our call handlers and frontline staff are dealing with inappropriate 999 calls.

“We would strongly urge people who think it is funny to make a prank call to stop and think about the potential consequences.”

He said that calling 999 was restricted to emergencies only.

While the number of hoax calls are a small percentage of total demand, Mr Norton said they divert ambulances away from real emergencies, with the service sometimes forced to send a clinician to a hoax call to confirm there is not a patient in need.

During winter, EEAST receives more than 3,200 calls a day - about 133 an hour, more than two every minute and 200 above the rest-of-year average of 3,000 a day.

It means that important calls could be missed, ambulances could be delayed and lives could be lost.

Though some postcodes were not traceable, the 469 calls include 51 from Norfolk, 81 from Cambridgeshire and 37 in Suffolk, with the others split between the rest of the region.

The ambulance service is running an It’s Your Call campaign, which aims to educate people on the situations when they should and should not call 999.

To bring home the message they have released some of their most inappropriate calls – including one about an injured seagull and another from someone concerned their goldfish was drowning.

The figures were gained through a Freedom of Information request.