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This is the moment a woman driver was pulled to safety after spending a night trapped in her car balancing on a cliff edge.

The car was perilously close to toppling off the 400 ft cliff face in St Agnes, Cornwall after the 56-year-old driver careered off the road yesterday evening.

But the car was only spotted at 9.30am this morning after passer-by, who also became stranded when he went to her rescue, raised the alarm.

Rescue operation: The driver is winched to safety after her car careered off the road in Newquay

Police and helicopter crews were drafted in to pull the pair to safety from the sloping cliff edge.

Falmouth Coastguard was called at 9.25am this morning to reports a woman was trapped in her car.

When they arrived they found the car perched on the side of the cliff with the driver trapped inside.

Perilous: Rescuers pulled the driver to safety from the 300 ft cliff face

A Falmouth Coastguard spokeswoman said: ‘Coastguard rescue officers on scene were able to establish that the 56-year-old woman inside the car was injured but conscious.

'That the vehicle had gone over the cliff the previous day.

'The car was secured in place by the coastguards and fire and rescue officers and the woman was then extracted from the vehicle at 12pm.'

Safe: Emergency services carefully attached a winch to the balancing car before removing the woman driver (pictured)

A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall Police added: 'Police, HM Coastguard, Cornwall Fire and Rescue and the ambulance service dealt with an incident in St Agnes where a car and its occupant were trapped after going over a cliff.

'The car and the woman who is thought to have been driving became trapped after going over the edge and becoming wedged at the cliff at St Agnes Head near to the coastguard station.

Mike Pulley, station manager at the National Coastwatch Institution (NCI), St Agnes Head, said the cliffs in the area where the car is trapped are 400ft (91.5m) high.

Dangerous: Police, the coastguard and paramedics gather to conduct the rescue operation

Mr Pulley, 64, said: "The cliffs round here have got quite a bit of a slope - they are not sheer cliffs - and that may well have saved this driver.

"It could be that this car is lodged in one of the crevices - the car can't be seen from our look-out position."

He added that Richard Eagle, a volunteer NCI watchkeeper at St Agnes Head, called the emergency services after being alerted by members of the public this morning.

The NCI is a voluntary organisation which keeps watch along the UK's shores. dailymail.co.uk