Ambulance chiefs have apologised after it took two hours to reach a boy hit by a car.

The child, thought to be aged 12, was struck in London Road, Dover, at around 5pm on Sunday.

He was not seriously injured and was eventually taken to hospital.

A spokesman for South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust said: “We take any concerns raised seriously and we are sorry it took us longer than it should have to attend this call.

“We have a duty to prioritise immediately life-threatening calls.

“While we are working hard to improve response times across our region, there are times when demand for our services means we are unable to reach some patients as quickly as we would like.

“In addition we continue to experience delays in handing over patients at hospital which impacts on our ability to respond quickly to patients in the community.

“We are sorry for the additional distress the delay will no doubt have caused.”

The boy’s condition had been known to be non-life threatening, an arm injury, and SECAmb aims to reach such casualties in 30 minutes.

The ambulance this time came shortly after 7pm, a delay of about 90 minutes.

SECAmb says that all calls are triaged and this is based on the information provided by the caller.

The child was described locally as being 12 years old.

A Kent Police spokesman said: “We were called to a report of a collision in London Road involving a pedestrian and car at around 5pm on Sunday.

“Officers attended the scene to assist with a road closure.

“No arrests were made and the pedestrian was taken to a local hospital for treatment.”

Just last Thursday it was announced that SECAmb was to remain in special measures for other problems.

These included the recording of 999 calls, safe use of medicines and investigating incidents in a timely way.

Inspectors the Care Quality Commission had originally put the trust in special measures and branded it as inadequate in September 2016.

But the CQC found that some improvements had been made since its inspection that year, particularly around reporting of incidents and staffing levels during busy periods.

The incident came after we reported how a 13-year-old boy with a broken collar bone was forced to wait almost two hours for an ambulance.