YORK is languishing at the bottom of national league tables for “bed blocking”, new figures have revealed.

As reported in the The Press, 1,088 hospital “bed days” are lost in York each month because not enough places are available for patients ready to leave hospital.

Now national figures show the city ranks 147th out of 151 across the whole of England for these delays in the transfer of care, performing well below the national average.

Neighbouring authorities perform much better in the figures published by the Health and Social Care Information Service. North Yorkshire ranks at 94 out of 151, Leeds at 84, and the East Riding of Yorkshire at 51 out of 151.

When the figures are restricted to the delays attributable to local social services, rather than the NHS, York ranks 140th out of 142 local authorities and performs four times worse than the average for Yorkshire and the Humber.

Liberal Democrat councillor Nigel Ayre said: “These figures show the true scale of the problem and reveal just how poorly York is performing compared to the regional and national averages.

“The figures also reveal that the biggest issue lies with social care services overseen by the council rather than delays with the NHS.”

He called on council leaders to avoid playing politics with the issue, but come up with answers on why York performs so badly and causes so many delays for patients leaving hospital.

City of York Council has said it is “seeking clarification” over the earlier figures which were published by NHS England, saying they were at odds with another set of data sent out by the Audit Commission.

Council leader James Alexander said demand for social care was increasing, but the council had committed resources to help meet demand and to cope with the growing complexity of care needs.

A spokesman for York Hospital said bosses wanted to see fewer patients delayed in its beds, but had to make sure people were fit to leave hospital and could be discharged safely to the right place with the right support.