Big companies including the BBC say all the right things about supporting new mothers but do not follow through, the One Show presenter Alex Jones has said.

Jones, one of the BBC’s highest-profile female presenters, gave birth to her son Teddy in January 2017.

She told the Hay literary festival that she returned to work after three months, which she felt was too quick for after a first child. She said things would have been better if there were more facilities for new mothers.

“Companies all say the right things. They say yes we’re there. We’re going to support families, we are going to make it possible for dads to take paternity leave, for mothers to take extended maternity leave, to feed at work,” she said.

“Actually, the truth is the facilities still aren’t there. They talk a good game but even at the BBC – and oh my goodness, I hope they’re not here now – there isn’t a creche, there isn’t a room where you can express milk, there isn’t a fridge where you can put your milk … there’s a pregnancy contemplation room.”

The session was being chaired by the Radio 3 presenter Clemency Burton-Hill, who informed Jones that in fact there was a mothers’ room on the third floor of Broadcasting House – a different building to where the One Show is filmed.

Burton-Hill said that after she had a child in 2014 she used the room every day and it was horrible. “You have to really know what you’re looking for and it is down a corridor. You get in there it’s dark, it’s smelly, it hasn’t been cleaned for a week.”

She recalled going in there one morning with her “cleavage about to explode” and finding “a bloke having a kip”. He was at the end of an overnight shift for the news channel and he seemed resentful about being disturbed, she said.

Jones said she had returned to work too quickly not because of pressure from the BBC but because of the pressure she put on herself, fearful that her stand-in would be doing too well. “What if they are amazing? What if they are brilliant?” she asked herself.

She revealed that the newsreader Sophie Raworth had advised her not to watch the programme while she was on leave because “it will just fill you with dread”.

A BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC already offers flexible working, jobshares and childcare vouchers, whilst Donalda MacKinnon [director of BBC Scotland] is currently leading a piece of work to examine what more can be done to support mothers and all women in the workplace.

“This review has been hearing from women across the BBC as well as examining best practice in other organisations and will be reporting back soon.”