The family of an 81-year-old grandmother who died at home after waiting more than four hours for paramedics said last night: ‘We are heartbroken.’

By the time an ambulance crew reached Marie Norris last Tuesday she had stopped breathing. Beside her body ‘devastated’ medics found her bags packed, ready to go to hospital.

Mother-of-three Mrs Norris, who lived less than a mile from the ambulance station in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, dialled 999 shortly before 8pm with chest pains.

The East of England Ambulance Service said one of its clinicians made a ‘welfare call’ to the pensioner at 9.47pm, though her family dispute this.

The family of 81-year-old grandmother Marie Norris who died at home after waiting more than four hours for paramedics said last night: ‘We are heartbroken’

Ambulance chiefs said they couldn’t send a vehicle sooner because of ‘extremely high’ demand and delays at A&E units. The ambulance crew eventually arrived at 11.46pm but had to wait for firefighters to break down the door of her bungalow. They finally went in at 12.21am.

Mrs Norris, a widow, had not called her family or friends for help. ‘She would not have wanted to bother anyone,’ said her son-in-law Brendan Breheny.

He added that she didn’t have a landline at home, only a mobile. Her daughter Linda, 59, found no evidence of the ‘welfare’ call on her phone. She filmed herself checking it and said she found no missed or received calls around 9.47pm.

Linda said: ‘No one called her back and spoke to her, no one has apologised to us, they have not even contacted us.

‘She was fit as a fiddle. We don’t know what to do at all. We’re all heartbroken.’

Mrs Norris moved into her bungalow after her husband Fred, a painter and decorator, died in 2009 after more than 50 years of marriage.

The East of England Ambulance Service said it was 'under extreme pressure' after crews arrived three hours and 45 minutes after her initial call (above, Clacton Hospital)

Friends said she was thoroughly enjoying life in recent months. In November, she went on holiday to Norfolk, with her neighbour, Jenny Spalding.

Mrs Spalding, also 81, said: ‘This is a terrible shock. I’d only just seen her on the Thursday before Christmas because we went line-dancing together.’

She spent Christmas with her daughter Maxine, a retired secretary with Coutts bank. She also has a son, Peter.

Other neighbours said they’d last seen her in recent days vacuuming her Citroen car and that she’d not complained of any health worries.

Mr Breheny, 56, said: ‘We don’t know when she died or what she died from. We have to wait for the coroner’s report. We didn’t know anything was wrong until 9.30am on January 3 when a policeman knocked on the door.’

East of England Ambulance Service has launched an internal investigation and apologised. It said the service is stretched and staff under pressure.

Deputy Chief Executive Sandy Brown said: 'Our sincere condolences and apologies go out to the patient's family and friends and we are truly sorry for the ambulance wait that occurred at this incident.

'Regarding this incident, we received a call just before 8pm on 2nd January to a report of a woman with chest pain in Clacton.

'Due to extremely high demand on the service and delays at accident and emergency units, we were not able to immediately dispatch an ambulance.

'A clinician in one of our control rooms made a welfare call and spoke to the patient at 9.47pm and an ambulance crew arrived at the address at 11.46pm. The patient was found unconscious and not breathing and sadly died at the scene.'

He added: 'We have very publicly expressed how stretched the ambulance service is and the pressures our staff and the NHS as a whole have been under the past few days.

'We are working in partnership but we are facing hospital handover delays, which can prevent us from responding as quickly as we need to.

'As a Trust, we have experienced our busiest days ever and we know our partners in the hospitals are in the same situation.

'We had more than 4,200 calls across the East of England that day, more than 1,300 of which were in Essex and more than 250 were in North East Essex.'

Dave Powell, of the GMB union, said: ‘The paramedics who responded are devastated because they’re not in the job to find people dead, they’re in the job to help people and keep them alive. The Government has got to wake up to this crisis.’

A statement by the ambulance service on Tuesday said the service received more than 4,100 calls on December 31 and around 4,800 on January 1.

'To put this into content, the trust's average daily volume of calls is about 3,000 calls a day,' it added.

Matt Broad, deputy director of service delivery, added: 'The trust, as well as the wider NHS, is still experiencing incredibly high demand and is under extreme pressure.'

The ambulance service previously said it has had to rely on taxis to take patients to hospital after struggling to cope with a surge in demand over the holiday period.

The MP for North Norfolk constituency, which is served by the ambulance service, said: 'Paramedics are having to work long shifts because of insufficient workforce.

'These are the human consequences of the financial state the NHS is in. This is why it's vital the government acts, the prime minister can't stand by and allow the NHS to deteriorate.

'I've been making clear that the state that the system is in, it's inevitable that people will lose their lives and failures of care will mean people will be left with long-term disabilities.

'One of the major strains is the ambulance service and its link with A&E, problems with handovers and ambulances stacking up, which leads to delays.'

Michael Le Cornu, chairman of the Tendring Pensioners' Action Group in Essex, said he was disgusted that the woman had been left to die on her own.

He said: 'It's terrible that she was left waiting for such a long time. It really is disgusting.

'We have been worried about this sort of thing happening for some time and have heard similar examples, including in which a 94-year-old died.

'We are disgusted with the complacent attitude of this particular Government. Until just recently they thought there were no problems with the NHS.'