A disabled mother was forced to wait for seven hours to be rescued after her car broke down miles from her home.

April Smith from Beith phoned RAC to attend when she broke down in Wemyss Bay.

The first recovery vehicle arrived three hours later, but refused to take April home because of boundary rules. April was then reassured by RAC that a taxi would be sent for her. The 53-year-old waited in a local caravan park reception area, but the pick-up did not arrive for another four hours. By this point, the reception had closed, meaning that April was waiting for over two hours alone outside.

She told the Herald: “I’ve got MS and the RAC know that. I was scared obviously because after 5pm, any staff that were in the reception area had went home, so I was on my own in the dark. Two-and-a-half hours I was myself. It was freezing because obviously I couldn’t leave the engine running.”

An RAC spokesperson said: “We offer sincere apologies to Ms Smith for the delays arranging recovery of her vehicle and the distress this caused. Despite our best planning, the poor weather conditions meant we still experienced unexpectedly high demand for our services – in fact the day of her breakdown turned out to be our busiest for breakdowns in seven years. The weather was so bad that recovery vehicles were in very short supply which led to some regrettably-long waiting times. This is, of course, is no consolation to Ms Smith and we do accept that our team should have provided more regular updates so she knew what to expect from us and when. We would like to stress that her experience was not typical of the high standard of service we normally provide.”