A BLACKPOOL resident who stopped to help an injured man by the River Wyre was astounded that an ambulance took nearly half an hour to arrive.

The Citizen reader, who asked not to be named, said the dazed man was sitting in mud on a slipway by Blackpool and Fleetwood Yacht Club at Skippool Creek. He appeared to have a broken leg, but was forced to wait for an ambulance as other emergencies took priority.

"I asked him if he was okay and he said he had slipped over and he couldn't get up," said the passer-by.

Together with others nearby, he lifted the man on to wooden planks. But the man was in too much pain to be moved.

"I was shocked that the ambulance didn't arrive for so long. I don't think it's good to have somebody sat on a cold concrete floor for half an hour, no matter what's wrong with them.

"I think they have to make a decision about the condition of the injured person quickly, but how do you know how quickly a person may deteriorate after an injury? Surely it's better to get somebody to hospital sooner rather than later."

A spokesman for the Lancashire Ambulance Service said a policy of patient confidentiality blocks him discussing the case in detail, but confirmed it took 26 minutes to get an ambulance to Skippool Creek around midday on Saturday.

He said: "We sent three ambulances in total. The first two vehicles were diverted to more serious cases."

Decisions to divert, and severity of cases, are determined on the strength of the information given by callers and analysed by a widely used system called Medical Prioritisation Despatch System (MPDS), he said.

And though there are some situations where one emergency is 'clearly more severe than another' the ambulance service would always 'respond to anybody who needs it', he said.

Temporary warning signs, warning of the danger of slipping, have now been posted by the council's Coast and Countryside Service team where the public right of way crosses the slipway at Skippool Creek.