Central Blackpool locals are outraged after an 80 year old woman had to wait 2 hours for an ambulance

The woman, who was on holiday, visited the Bloomfield Social Club with her husband on Tuesday evening.

At around 22:05, when she began to complain of chest pains, the entertainment stopped and staff came to her aid.

But it took until almost midnight for an ambulance to arrive.

Dawn Andrews, who is first aid trained and was working that night, said that the first call was made "at 22:09 exactly."

"It was very distressing for her and her husband. We tried to comfort her as best as we could."

"When they didn't arrive, I called them back again at 22:28."

North West Ambulance Service confirmed that they received the call, and that it was classified as "Category 3".

Ambulances aim to get to 90 percent of Category 3 calls within 2 hours of receiving them.

But NWAS also stated that at 23:31, the woman's case was upgraded to Category 2 - a more urgent classification which they aim to arrive at within 18 minutes.

A spokesperson for NWAS said: "In this instance, while waiting for a response, the patient’s condition was reviewed by a clinician and following this update, the call was upgraded and the next available resource arrived after 24 minutes."

The ambulance eventually arrived at 23:55 - almost two hours after the initial call was made, and 6 minutes outside of NWAS's Category 2 target.

It is understood that the woman left hospital in a healthy condition early on Wednesday morning.

The spokesperson for NWAS said: “The trust has a finite number of resources available at any one time and therefore calls must be prioritised based on the current condition of the patient and the information given to us by the caller.

“We appreciate that waiting for an ambulance is a very distressing time and we do always try to send the most appropriate response as quickly as possible. We would be happy to discuss this case in more detail with the patient’s family if they would like to contact our patient experience team.”