A GRAN was forced to wait almost six hours in agonising pain for an ambulance after falling outside her home.

Florence Holden, 98, dislocated her shoulder and cut her eye and finger in the fall in Lower Audley, Blackburn.

A concerned neighbour spotted Mrs Holden and rang 999 but it was nearly six hours before ambulance crews arrived.

She was then taken to Royal Blackburn Hospital following the incident on February 7.

After receiving treatment, she was released from hospital the following day and is now recovering at her daughter Christine Woodford’s home in Blackburn.

Ambulance service chiefs have apologised for Mrs Holden’s wait and have launched an investigation.

But Mrs Woodford slammed the wait as awful.

She said: “After my mum fell, she dislocated her shoulder and cut her eye and finger.

“A neighbour first saw her and managed to take her into their home and phoned an ambulance and let me know what had happened.

“The fall happened at 4.20pm and it wasn’t until 10.10pm that an ambulance arrived.

“This is despite me ringing the ambulance service four times and her being in agony.

“She was taken to hospital and waited an hour and a half in A&E before she was seen by a doctor who gave her an X-ray.

“They then managed to put her shoulder back in place and stitch her eye up and sort her finger out and she was out the next day.”

Mrs Holden is a great-grandmother-of-four and grandmother-of-two and has since turned 98.

Mrs Woodford added: “Nobody should have to wait this long for an ambulance, especially a woman of her age.”

The neighbour who found Mrs Holden has made a formal complaint to North West Ambulance Service.

An ambulance service spokesman said that due to the number of 999 calls they receive, it sometimes has more emergencies than available ambulances which means patients sometimes have to wait longer.

The spokesman added: “We have apologised for the wait that Mrs Holden experienced and our patient experience team are investigating.

“The findings will be shared with her once this is complete.

“Due to the number of 999 calls that we receive, it is sometimes the case that we have more emergencies than we have available ambulances which unfortunately means that patient’s do sometimes have to wait longer than we would like.

“We must prioritise based on severity of the patient’s condition to make sure that we get to people in an immediately life-threatening condition as soon as possible.

“We send our best wishes to Mrs Holden and hope she is now feeling much better.”