Pensioner left laying on Peterborough street for over three hours waiting for ambulance

The man, who eyewitnesses told the Peterborough Telegraph was in his 80s, was injured having fallen near Laxton Square in Northminster at 12.24pm on Thursday, March 31.

Josef Gallagher, who has a stall on Peterborough City Market, said: “People have rang and rang the ambulance and still nothing. Three times they’ve been called.

“Luckily a nurse from the nearby NHS walk-in centre is with him and he’s conscious and talking, but can’t move or get up.

“I’m in my 70s and I would have hated it to have been me, left for that long like that.”

Another woman who witnessed the incident, who did not want to be named, contacted this newspaper about the incident. She said: “He was laying on a concrete floor at the market for three hours. He had cut his head and hurt his shoulder.

“They rang three times for an ambulance and were told an ambulance would be sent but it never came.

“A PCSO ended up taking him in a taxi.”

A spokesman for the East of England Ambulance Service said: “We received a call at 12.24pm to reports of a man who had fallen near Laxton Square in Northminster. A rapid response vehicle was dispatched and arrived at 3.34pm to assess the man, believed to be in his 70s, for a shoulder injury.

“An ambulance was not dispatched as the police conveyed the patient to hospital.

“The call was coded as a green serious but non-life-threatening calls and there may have been more serious calls in the area which nearby resources were assigned to.

“Looking at the call demand it looks like we’ve received more than 30 red serious life threatening calls in Peterborough during that period, which is the highest figure in all of our constituency’s in the same period.”