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Thousands of Londoners who dial 999 will no longer receive an emergency ambulance after soaring demand and staff shortages forced health chiefs to prioritise the sickest patients.

London Ambulance Service has raised the threshold for dispatching crews after being deluged with almost 15,000 extra calls a month - while having 450 fewer front-line staff due to a recruitment and retention crisis.

The number of 999 calls since April is up almost 11 per cent on last year, with 853,516 received to September 11. Over the same period, paramedics reached only 64 per cent of life-threatening “category A” cases within eight minutes – well down on the 75 per cent NHS target.

Ambulance chiefs today announced that it would not send crews to 3,500 “category C” incidents a week that would previously had a response of between 20 minutes to an hour.

Patients whose condition is judged by paramedics at ambulance HQ to be not life-threatening will be told to get themselves to hospital or seek help from their GP or the NHS 111 helpline.

Dr Fenella Wrigley, deputy medical director at London Ambulance Service, said: “People with twisted ankles, trapped fingers in doors or acute dental pain do not need an emergency ambulance response.

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“Patients with minor illnesses – who do need to go to hospital but are not in a life-threatening condition – will wait longer.”

Tougher rules on dispatching ambulances were introduced temporarily last year to cope with the winter emergency but are being made permanent to cope with high vacancy rates and rising staff sickness.

At the same time, efforts are being made to recruit around 250 paramedics from Australia and New Zealand and to create more university places for trainee paramedics to address a national shortage.

London Ambulance Service chief executive Ann Radmore appealed to Londoners not to abuse the service and only dial 999 for medical emergencies to help it cope with “critical” staff shortages. It should have 3,000 front-line staff but is short of 320 paramedics and 130 emergency medical technicians.

Ms Radmore said: “We have had increasing demand year on year, and that is continuing, particularly this year. The ‘category A’ demand is relentless. There is a national shortage of paramedics but London has the most severe shortage. Put these two things together and you are in a severe position. We need Londoners to play their part in this.”