THE mayor of Whitchurch, devastated by his beloved wife of more than 50 years' death, hopes the 11-hour delay for an ambulance will act as 'wake-up call' for the service.

Councillor John Sinnott's wife Jacqueline died on December 2 after a fall at home on November 24, hurting her back and eventually needed to attend A&E where she was diagnosed with a soft tissue injury.

A week later, she was in further pain and an ambulance was called at 7am on December 1st but did not arrive until 6.45pm that evening where, according to John, paramedics were immediately concerned about her state.

And he believes that it may be investigated by the Shropshire coroner whether the ambulance delay contributed to her death.

He said: "After five hours we rang again and were told that they had allocated an ambulance but could not give a time.

"Unfortunately she was now in too much pain to go by car and wanted to wait for an ambulance, which she thought was on its way.

"The ambulance came at 6.45pm, a delay of 11 hours 45 minutes, by which time and although they didn’t say anything to me clearly thought she was in a bad way.

"I was not able to go (because of Covid) with her but my daughter, Heather, who lives in Shrewsbury, was able to go. She got to the hospital at around 8pm and they started to do tests to find out what was wrong.

"My daughter had to leave in the early hours and rang me to say that they were working on her to stabilise her for surgery. Even at this point I did not believe that her life was in danger.

"The hospital identified sepsis due to a ruptured colon and continued to try and stabilise her for surgery; unfortunately they were unsuccessful and she passed away in the early hours of Thursday morning.

"I have never been so shocked in my life as I hadn’t known that her life was in any danger.

"My son who was in London had rung my daughter for an update and got the terrible news and rang me as my daughter was too upset and could not find the words to tell me.

"The hospital was going to release her body to the undertaker but we contacted the coroners office and they stopped the release for a post mortem and may investigate if the ambulance delay contributed to her death.

"Her body has now been released and the funeral can go ahead on Thursday, December 23 as planned and I hope that her death is a wake up call to the ambulance service so that this does not happen to another family."

John and Jacqueline, who are both from Wirral, met almost 57 years ago and married in 1968, moving with him to his various army postings in the UK and Europe.

He added: "When I retired we settled in Shropshire and moved to Whitchurch some 25 years ago.

"Her death has left a void in my life; no more holidays together with the dogs in the motor home, no more holidays abroad together and we won’t be visiting Australia together next year to see my nephew and his new baby."

A West Midlands Ambulance Service spokeswoman said: “We would like to offer our sincere condolences to the family of Mrs Sinnott and apologise for the delay in responding on December 1.

“Unfortunately, the whole of the NHS remains under severe pressure which is being felt intensely in our service in the West Midlands and hospital handover delays do mean patients are waiting longer for an ambulance to come to them in the community.

"We were also dealing with high levels of demand from people with life-threatening conditions.

"We are working with all local partners across the health and care system to reduce delays so crews can respond to the next incident as quickly as possible, and staff and volunteers continue to work tirelessly to respond as soon as we can.

"We are also continuing to bolster frontline and control room staffing and have introduced a number of measures to help manage pressures in the service."