Two people remain in hospital after a crash involving a coach and a Tesco lorry on the northbound carriageway of the A1 at Diddington at around 5.30am on Sunday morning.

The East of England Ambulance Service said it was on the scene within six minutes and thirteen people were taken to hospital – two with serious injuries were taken to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge and 11 with minor injuries were taken to Hinchingbrooke Hospital.

Another 29 people were taken to One Leisure, St Neots as part of a major incident strategy.

However, this was stood down at just after 7.30am when all of the people who were involved had been transported away from the scene.

Two fire crews from St Neots and one from Huntingdon were also called to the scene.

Station Commander Callum Faint, Incident Commander, said: “The lorry was overturned and across the carriage way. Due to the impact both the driver and co-driver of the coach were trapped and all the other occupants were suffering various degrees of minor impact injuries.

“Owing to the large number of casualties, the ambulance service declared a major incident and triage was established at the scene. As a fire and rescue service we began supporting our colleagues with the large volume of casualties whilst simultaneously extricating the two casualties using specialist cutting equipment. None of the casualties are believed to have life threatening injuries.”

He added: “This was a very positive example of multi-agency working involving not only the emergency services but also local authority (for a place to move the casualties to), highways and Carillion, who have already begun in repairing the damaged barriers.”

The road was closed for most of the day while the vehicles were recovered and investigations were carried out.

The Redwing coach was transporting more than 40 passengers and two drivers back to Newcastle-upon-Tyne from London following a Carphone Warehouse work party.

Sergeant Gordon Murray said: “I would appeal for witnesses to the collision or anyone who saw the vehicles in the moments leading up to the incident.”

INFORMATION: Anyone with information should contact the roads policing unit on 101.