THE EAST OF England ambulance service has set the record straight as to why they took over two hours to attend to a cyclist who collided with a motorbike on London Road in Grays.
The collision occurred at 6.30pm on Friday July 3rd.
The police attended to the female cyclist and the road was closed but as time went on, there were increasing concerns as to where the ambulance service were?
A spokesperson for East of England Ambulance Service said: "We’d like to apologise to the patient for the delay. We received a call at 6.39pm to reports of a traffic incident in Grays.
On Friday, and the previous two days, the ambulance service had seen a surge in 999 calls – we took more than 3,000 calls, about 20% more than we take on average. We sent a number of ambulances, but as a result of this call demand these ambulances were diverted whilst enroute to patients with more critical and serious conditions.
The patient was transported to hospital by St Johns Ambulance.
Rob Ashford, locality director for Essex said, “We are focussed on improving our service to patients which is why we are recruiting another 400 student paramedics this year to increase frontline staffing and ambulance cover.
The cyclist was taken to Basildon Hospital with neck and back pains.
