John Lewis temporarily removed a product from the shelves after a toddler nearly choked on a toy part.

Henry Drew, who is 13-months-old, was bought a wooden car set from the department store by his granny Ruth Green, who lives in Iwade.

The 50-year-old bought the First London Vehicles set at the Bluewater store last month, for his first birthday.

At £9.95, the set contained three toys, a London bus, a black taxi and a police car, which broke, putting Henry in danger, according to the housewife.

She said: “It was a really nice set, he was playing with it and I heard something fall onto the floor and when I looked, he had it in his mouth.

“The little light had come off.

“Upon looking at it – if he had swallowed it, we would have been in a lot of trouble.”

The Pintail Drive resident contacted the retail giant and was shocked when it didn’t immediately issue a recall notice.

She added: “It was quite alarming.”

John Lewis removed the toy from sale online and in-store over the weekend while a sample of the same batch was sent to a testing facility.

Investigations came back ‘clear’ and the chain is satisfied that Mrs Green’s issue was an isolated incident rather than a production fault with all the toys.

The grandmother-of-two added: “It’s a bit unsatisfactory to be honest.

“I’m still concerned that someone else might have a toy that has been affected and I just want to stop it happening to someone else.”

She said: “In the future, I shall be checking every one of his toys.”

In a statement, John Lewis said: “There is nothing more important to us than the safety of the products we sell, and we have contacted Mrs Green to thank her for bringing this to our attention.

“As a precaution we temporarily removed the product from sale while we carried out urgent checks with an independent laboratory.

“Having carefully reviewed the test results we’re satisfied this was an isolated incident, and we’ll be putting the product back on sale this week.”