AMBULANCE crews dealt with more than 15,000 emergencies last year in which alcohol was a factor, official figures show.

The number is an increase on 2016 statistics when there were 14,406 such incidents, but down from a high in 2015 of 23,577 alcohol-related incidents.

An Freedom of Information request found Glasgow had the highest number of cases, with a total of 3783, followed by Edinburgh with 1674 and North Lanarkshire with 1279. In total, there have been 53,141 alcohol- related incidents in the past three years, the equivalent of nearly 50 a day.

The Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) said not all incidents were directly linked to alcohol but included those in which drink was recorded by crews under “additional factors” in logs.

The Scottish Conservatives, which obtained the figures from the service, said SAS was struggling to deal with the scale of demand across the country despite the Scottish Government saying staffing has increased by nearly a quarter since 2006.

The Tories have campaigned for measures such as recovery centres to deal with people who have consumed too much alcohol at weekends and during big events, to take the strain off ambulances and accident and emergency departments.

“It’s clear people who’ve consumed too much alcohol are putting an immense and unnecessary strain on the ambulance service,” Scottish Conservative public health spokeswoman Annie Wells said.

“No-one will be more annoyed than hardworking paramedics that this particular challenge stands in the way of helping patients who’ve fallen ill through no fault of their own.

“What’s more worrying is the real scale of this will be so much higher, as these are only the incidents when the Scottish Ambulance Service has deemed it necessary to specifically record alcohol as a factor.

“The SNP government needs to ensure ambulance staff are sufficiently resourced to deal with current challenges, and regrettably that includes alcohol. We need to start discussing measures that could take the pressure off paramedics when dealing with this, including the possible role of temporary units in towns and cities to deal with those who’ve consumed too much, meaning they wouldn’t need to go to A&E or trouble the ambulance service.”

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Scottish Ambulance Service staffing has increased by nearly 24 per cent since 2006 – and we have increased the ambulance service budget by 46 per cent, to £237 million, while we are committed to training a further 1000 paramedics by 2021.

“We recognise the damaging impact misuse can have, not just on individuals but the public services who respond. We have taken a number of actions to tackle alcohol misuse, including pressing ahead with minimum unit pricing and we will be refreshing our alcohol strategy shortly.”

The Scottish Government is introduce minimum pricing for alcohol in May after a lengthy legal battle in a bid to tackle problem drinking.Health Secretary Shona Robison has said she expected the price to be set at 50p per unit, but this will be subject to consultation.

The 50p-per-unit rate would raise the price of the cheapest bottle of red wine (9.4 units of alcohol) to £4.69 and a 70cl bottle of whisky (28 units of alcohol) could not be sold for less than £14, for instance.

Normal strength cider (five per cent ABV) would cost at least £2.50 a litre but a super-strength version (7.5 per cent ABV) would have to cost a minimum of £3.75 for a litre.

People in Scotland are said to buy 20 per cent more alcohol on average than those in England and Wales.