NEWS SHOPPER has discovered that an ambulance was called more than an hour before a fire killed a woman in St Mary Cray yet failed to turn up.

A 45-year old woman known locally as “Yvonne Fisher” died in the blaze on Saturday evening in Ranmore Path.

Police officers became aware of the blaze on at around 10.30pm that night however the ambulance had already been called to that address almost an hour and a half before.

The ambulance didn’t arrive until around 10.50pm, 20 minutes after a second call from the fire brigade.

An London Ambulance Service spokesperson said: “We were called at 9.08pm on Saturday (21 July) to an address on Ranmore Path but unfortunately weren’t able to respond immediately.

“We were subsequently called just before 10.30pm by the London Fire Brigade and sent an ambulance crew, responder in a car, an officer and members of our hazardous area response team.

“The first staff arrived at the scene at 10.52pm.

“We have now started to look into the full circumstances of what happened.”

A post mortem is due to take place and investigators are still determining the cause of the fire.

NHS statistics revealed Bromley Ambulance Service responded to 74% of calls within eight minutes in May 2012.