A GRANDMOTHER who broke down on the same stretch of the M50 where a woman was murdered was left waiting with her two grandchildren for six hours before her breakdown recovery arrived.

Nichola Innes was travelling home to Upton Snodsbury in Worcestershire after treating her seven-year-old grandsons, Aiden and Mike, to a weekend away in the Wye Valley in her camper van.

They had visited Symonds Yat and Goodrich Castle but it was on their journey home on a Sunday evening at 7pm that the van broke down near to Junction 2 (Gloucester) on the eastbound carriageway of the M50.

The 52-year-old called her breakdown cover, RAC, but despite promising to be earlier, they did not arrive until 1am.

Ms Innes was also shocked that despite calling the police three times, they did not attend.

She said she had just managed to get onto the hard shoulder as the engine seized up but the back end was stuck just over the white line.

She said: "What really appalled me- I was there for that long in a dangerous position. The police didn't come even though they were called."

She said she was terrified when she found out from a family member that in June 1988 a pregnant woman, Marie Wilks, was murdered on that stretch of road when she broke down with two young children in the car and went to get help.

At that time she had phoned police who were out in 30 minutes, but unfortunately it was too late.

Ms Innes said: "They have cut down so much on policing. They were out in half an hour in 1988 to a woman broken down with children on the motorway- that was many years ago but that was the way police responded. It is not the way they respond now. They haven't got the resources to respond like that."

She said she thought the RAC would prioritise her as she was a woman on her own, with two children, on a motorway.

As darkness fell, she had to put the children to bed in a ditch, which she said was "horrible." Her family lived an hour away from where they were stranded and Ms Innes said they all expected the RAC to arrive earlier.

An RAC spokesman said: "We would like to sincerely apologise to Ms Innes for the unacceptable delay she experienced.

"This was due to serious accidents on both the M5 and M42 that led to severe traffic congestion. In addition the situation was made worse by the fact we were handling an unusually high volume of breakdowns that evening. While we appreciate this will be of little comfort to Ms Innes, we would like to assure her experience is not representative of our service." He said they are determined to put things right.

Police said they referred the incident to Highways England as the appropriate partner agency to monitor and deal with the situation.

Chief Inspector Stephen Owen added: "Officers will always endeavour to support our partner agencies should any additional assistance or police attendance be required."

Highways England operations manager, Colin Lowther, said: “We always do our best to help stranded motorists where we can. On this occasion, while aware the RAC were on their way, we were at a state of heightened alert dealing with a number of other serious incidents that prevented one of our crews from getting there until later into the night.”