Grandmother died while ambulance crews took breaks

THE family of a grandmother who died following a fall are furious after learning no ambulance attended because 12 out of 13 crews on duty were on their breaks.

Lynda Manning, 68, hit her head while walking to the car at the end of her daughter’s birthday party, in Swindon, an inquest heard.

Her family made several calls for an ambulance over the next hour but no help arrived.

After her condition worsened, they drove her to hospital themselves but she died the following day after emergency neurosurgery.

The inquest heard only one ambulance in the whole of Wiltshire was available to respond to 999 calls, but it was not in Swindon at the time of her death on October 1 last year. The others were having their legally required break, while Mrs Manning was left lying in the road outside her daughter Paula’s home.

Kevin Morse, Mrs Manning’s son-in-law, said they expected an ambulance to arrive in 10 minutes after she fell at midnight. He said: “Instead of giving us false hope, we would have preferred that they’d been honest and said no-one’s coming. We could have got her in the car a lot earlier and taken her to hospital in five minutes instead of waiting around for an hour and that could have made a difference.”

Coroner Dr Claire Balyscz returned a verdict of accidental death and said the ambulance delay was not a contributory factor to Mrs Manning’s death and described her injuries as “non-survivable”.

She added: “The delay in the ambulance arriving was due to the fact that the majority of ambulances were on an enforced break.”

The family’s call was classed as “amber” but upgraded to “red” after a second call. However, crews would not be required to interrupt their breaks unless the emergency is “purple” – the highest category. Speaking after the inquest, Mrs Manning’s widower Richard said: “Watching her on the floor, crying out that nobody’s coming to help her and asking where the ambulance is, was horrible.

“In all my years, I’d never had to phone an ambulance before and the one time I needed one, they failed me. I have a lot of respect for the ambulance service but it is atrociously managed and under-resourced.”

An ambulance service spokesman said: “We are very sorry that due to high levels of demand on that day we were unable to get to Mrs Manning more quickly.”