Sylvia waited more than 11 hours for an ambulance

Sylvia Chambers’ leg had become very swollen and hot on Sunday, July 2 so her daughter called the NHS non-emergency 111 line for advice.

A doctor was sent out to her Upper Dovercourt home and suspected a blood clot so called for an ambulance to take her to hospital, but as an urgent case and not as a top priority call.

Despite being told it would arrive within two hours, it did not turn up until 7.15am the next day.

Sylvia’s daughter, who does not want to be named, said: “When my mum had neuro sepsis in December the ambulance came really quickly.

“But this time something fundamentally went wrong. The doctor advised me the ambulance would be here within two hours – you feel confident in that, they are the professionals.

“The doctor said he thought mum had a clot and needed to go to hospital and needed a scan. I knew it was quite a serious situation.

“But they were calling me saying they didn’t know when they would come.

“I said to the ambulance ‘I don’t know what to do.’”

It wasn’t until 2.45am that the pair agreed with the ambulance service that an ambulance would collect Sylvia at 7.30am.

“They came at 7.15am and said if I had have called 999 and said her leg was swollen and hot then an ambulance would have come out,” Sylvia’s daughter added.

“We don’t ring the ambulance for a nosebleed, it’s not willy nilly, it’s when you need one.

“But if you call and don’t get a response – it doesn’t bear thinking about.”

Sylvia spent more than a week in Colchester Hospital being treated for a blood clot in her upper leg.

A spokesman for the East of England Ambulance service said: “We would like to apologise to Ms Chambers and her family for her ambulance wait and any further distress this may have caused.

“We received a call on July 2 at around 7.20pm from a health care professional which was coded as an ‘urgent’ non-emergency call.

“A number of welfare calls were made by staff in our control room and at around 2.30am the family agreed for an ambulance to be sent at 7am to take Ms Chambers to hospital. The family have contacted us and we will be responding to them directly.

“We were experiencing an increase in demand at that time, with almost 150 of a serious or life-threatening nature between 7pm-8am in Essex alone.”