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When June Williams, 81, fell in her kitchen as she was letting her dog out of the house, she called her daughter Donnella to ask for help. Donnella arrived at the property at around 9.30pm and called for an ambulance on three occasions before one finally arrived at 1.37am the next day.

The call was initially categorised as a level “green three” which is assigned to less urgent calls. Amber and red calls, assigned to serious injuries, are prioritised above green calls out of urgency with a response to a red call expected to be in the region of eight minutes.

Mrs Williams, who lived alone, was eventually taken to hospital Ysbyty Glan Clwyd in North Wales but there on the same day with her children by her side.

A cause of death of heart failure due to atheroma and COPD contributed to by a fractured hip was provided by Dr Mark Atkinson following a post-mortem, reports North Wales Live.

John Gittins, senior coroner for North Wales east and central, provided a conclusion of accidental death.

He heard the grandmother’s care was “as flawless as it could have been” given the pressures on the health service during the pandemic.

But Ruthin County Hall was told Donnella had dialled 999 for the second time shortly after receiving a welfare call from the ambulance service at 10.22pm.

She told the call handler at this point that her mother had injured her hip, which led to the call being escalated in the early hours of the morning. At 1.23am, the call was upgraded to an “amber two” due to concerns over the length of time Mrs Williams had already waited with a hip injury.

Due in part to the volume of “amber two” calls on the night, Mrs Williams’ call was escalated again to an “amber one” at 1.31am and an ambulance arrived at her home six minutes later. The ambulance then left at 2.04am for the address in St Asaph, North Wales, where it arrived at 2.13am, almost five hours after Donnella first rang 999.

Gillian Pleming, who was a utilisation manager for the Welsh Ambulance Service at the time, told the court an independent audit of the calls relating to Mrs Williams was conducted following her death. The audit, Ms Pleming said, found no issues of note with how the calls were handled.

When Mrs Williams arrived at the hospital, there were 34 patients in the emergency department as well as two-and-a-half wards full of Covid patients in the hospital. The capacity of the emergency department was stretched to the point that it presented an unacceptable risk to patient care at the time, the inquest heard.

Mrs Williams, who suffered from COPD and heart issues, declined while she was at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd and died on the evening of January 9 with her children by her side. A cause of death of heart failure due to atheroma and COPD contributed to by a fractured hip was provided by Dr Mark Atkinson following a post-mortem. John Gittins, senior coroner for North Wales east and central, provided a conclusion of accidental death.

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