I WAS appalled by the report (Journal, October 26) concerning Mr Rodney Dyke, who after an eight hour wait was sent to Hereford for urgent treatment because he, like 18 others, was unable to be allocated a NHS bed at Worcester's Ronkswood Hospital.

Vale MP Peter Luff's subsequent letter to the Secretary of State for Health misses the point because he assumes the lack of NHS beds currently available in Worcester Hospitals is the cause of the problem. The key issue is not the number of hospital beds, but their occupancy by elderly patients waiting discharge into nursing or residential homes because of a shortage of social services funding.

In the same issue of your paper you report on Worcestershire County Council's social services £4.6m shortfall and their refusal to properly fund those who should be discharged from hospital into care homes. This is not only causing care homes to be pushed out of business, as you have reported, but also hospital bed blocking, thus denying the NHS the facilities to give Mr Dyke, and many others, the local hospital treatment they would otherwise expect.

According to your report there are 49 people awaiting discharge from Evesham and Pershore hospitals alone. How many more elderly people are waiting for discharge from the Worcester hospitals? The annual 'winter demand' for hospital beds has hardly started. This is a major crisis waiting to happen.

Mr Luff should not target the NHS for the shortfall in hospital beds available, but rather social services to fund the discharge of elderly people blocking the existing beds in our hospitals so that Mr Dyke's experience is not repeated by others, especially during the coming winter.

JOHN H ROSIER, Celandine Cottage, Church Street, Wyre Piddle, Pershore.