A man waited an hour and a half for an ambulance with a severe leg injury after a motorcycle crash near Surbiton last week.

Speaking to the Comet, Alan Mccully, 55, revealed that he had collided with an upturned wheelie bin on Hook Road near Surbiton around 5.15am last Monday (February 4).

Mr Mccully said that after the crash he waited in agony for over two hours for the ambulance to arrive after a passerby dialled 999 on his behalf.

Mr Mccully said: "I hit the brakes, went into a skid and hit the bin square on. I ended up with an injury to my left leg....I was in a lot of pain. A car driver stopped, he called an ambulance and I was waiting in the rain from half past five (am) to quarter to seven to get picked up by an ambulance."

He described himself as being an experienced motorcyclist and that the impact had not been at high speed.

However, the level of pain sustained in the crash led Mr Mccully to believe he had a broken leg, and this was the information communicated the emergency responders.

Mr Mccully, who has worked with the emergency services in his career, said he thought that a suspected broken leg would normally be considered high priority and as such was shocked to be waiting for over two hours before being met by the first responders ambulance team.

Mr Mccully said: "I have a background in the emergency services, and for me mhy is that if you have a road traffic collision you’re high priority. They were told I had a suspected broken leg which would put you in the high priority case because you could have ruptured or broken one of the main arteries in your leg. They don’t know that, they were just told suspected broken leg."

Speaking to the Surrey Comet in response to the incident, London Ambulance Service (LAS) confirmed that an ambulance and paramedic team was dispatched to intercept and assist Mr Mccully following a call at 5.22am, but had been forced to redirect en route to a more serious, critical case in the area.

LAS later sent an available ambulance to the crash site, reaching the scene at 6.51am. Mr Mccully was then taken to hospital.

Mr Mccully said that passersby had helped him as he waited. He said he had sustained ligament damage from the crash.

In a statement sent to the Surrey Comet, LAS Director of Operations Paul Woodrow apologised to Mr Mccully.

Mr Woodrow said: "We are sorry for the delay in reaching this patient and any distress that this may have caused."

The LAS director added that the body had received a very high level of calls on February 4 and had been forced to allocate resources to the most critical patients.

Mr Woodrow said: "We aim to get to all of our patients as quickly as we can but must prioritise reaching those who are most critically ill and injured. This means some less critically ill or injured patients may wait longer – especially when we are particularly busy, as we were on 4 February when we received more than 6,000 calls."

LAS revealed earlier this month that they were receiving an exceedingly high volume of demand for their services this winter.

According to data published on February 4, December 2018 was the busiest month for LAS crews on record, with frontline ambulance crews in the capital treating well over 100,000 patients during December, around 7,000 more than the monthly average in 2017.

Mr Woodrow said: "Demand on our services continues to rise year on year...We plan carefully for periods of increased activity and put more staff on the road and in our control rooms to meet the increased demand."