A frail and elderly mother was left waiting for an ambulance for ten hours as she screamed out in agony - because there were "no ambulances available".
On the morning of April 24, Stuart Donald was alerted by a care provider that his mother had pushed the alarm button that she wears around her neck in case of an emergency, as she could not put weight on her legs and get out of bed.
Grimsby Live reports that Stuart said: "My mum's husband - my stepfather - died last year in a care home, so she went through all the restrictions of looking through the window and only having six people at the funeral. So she's been through all that. Life has not been good for my mother.
"She has a medical condition which resulted in her trying to get out of bed at around 3am and she couldn't put weight on her legs without her screaming in pain. So she sat on the edge of her bed, not knowing what to do and disorientated until about 7am when she pushed this alarm button she had around her neck.
"This linked her through to a care provider at North Lincolnshire Council, who initially rang my brother who is in intensive care in hospital after a cancer operation. Then they rang me, and I just said, 'If she's pushed that button, she needs help and you should call an ambulance, she's quite a frail old lady'.
Mr Donald, who lives near the Humber Bridge ended up driving to his mum in Scunthorpe where he found her sat on the end of her bed.
He said: "She said she couldn't stand up and that she'd been stuck there and she daren't move sideways because she couldn't put weight on her legs, and she was scared she'd fall off the bed. I couldn't move her so I rang another family member to help move her, but we couldn't.
"We tried to lift her up and she just screamed in pain. We knew then it was an emergency because we had a frail old lady who had been sat on the edge of the bed for six hours, shaking and shivering.
"I rang 111, they did an assessment over the phone, and she said we needed an ambulance. She said she'd notify it for us, so at 9.37am a man from the ambulance service rang me and said, 'I'm sorry, but we are really busy and I don't know when we'll get to your mother, but it'll be within six hours'.
"I said, 'My mother is sat in absolute agony and we physically can't move her, we need help - you must have capacity', and he said, 'No, not at the moment, but as soon as someone becomes available we'll send someone'.
"It was awful. After six hours, I decided to ring back. I rang back and spoke to a very professional lady who said they recognised they hadn't got to my mum but that it'd been upgraded to a Category two incident."
According to the East Midlands Ambulance Service website, Category two incidents are classed as an emergency and should be responded to within 18 minutes.
Mr Donald continued: "My mum was in distress and I physically didn't know what to do. She needed something for the pain and professional help, and that's what I expected from the ambulance service."
Mr Donald tried again two hours later and was still told there were no ambulances available in Scunthorpe and that the service was very busy.
The ambulance crew eventually arrived at 7.10pm - around ten hours after Mr Donald first called the ambulance for his mother.
He said: "They were brilliant with my mum, I can't fault them at all. They did checks and said she needed to go to hospital because she's clearly not right, and she needed hospital care. They took her in an ambulance at about 7.50pm.
"In my view, they are failing to protect the public. They're playing a gambling game, because there cannot be adequate cover if it takes nine-plus hours for an emergency response. What would've happened if my mum had deteriorated? She was screaming in pain and I was crying because I couldn't lift her. I was so frustrated because I just didn't know what else I could do."
Sue Cousland, Divisional Director for Lincolnshire at East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) said: “We are really sorry that we were not able to get to her sooner and this is not the level of service we aim to provide for our patients.
“Unfortunately, we continue to experience a sustained level of life-threatening and serious emergency calls and we continually work to prioritise the sickest and most severely injured patients first.
“We are working very closely with all of our health and social care partners to improve the response to patients in Lincolnshire.”
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