AN elderly man who banged his head badly after falling off a stool at a Gilsland pub had to wait more than 90 minutes for an ambulance to arrive.

When an emergency crew finally did turn up at the Samson Inn, the man was taken to the Cumberland Infirmary at Carlisle for a scan, as it was feared he could be suffering from a bleed to the brain.

Now local residents are wondering why the ambulance was despatched from Newcastle – more than 40 miles away – when the Cumberland Infirmary is less than 20 miles away.

An eye witness said: “The man banged his head quite badly and someone phoned for an ambulance at 9.10pm.

“It didn‘t arrive until 10.45pm because it had to come all the way from Newcastle. The man lay on the floor for about an hour and it was awful. It seemed like forever.”

However a spokesman for the North-East Ambulance Service explained that the original call had been put through to the North-West Ambulance Service, which had no emergency vehicles at that time.

The spokesman said: “The North-West service asked us if we were able to help out and we were happy to oblige.

“There are no county boundaries in the ambulance service. We all work together to ensure that the incident is attended by the nearest available ambulance.”

The North-East service received the call from its North-West colleagues at 9.18pm on Saturday, September 12, and the man’s injury was assessed as non-life-threatening.

An ambulance was despatched to Gilsland from Newcastle at 9.52pm and arrived at the Samson at 10.45pm. The patient was taken to Carlisle for a precautionary scan, because it is understood he had been taking the blood thinning agent warfarin.