YORK'S social services chief has been challenged to "take full responsibility" for the fact that city hospital patients were still blocking beds - a year after she pledged to end the problem.

Viv Kind, City of York Council's shadow executive member for social services, made the challenge to her opposite number, Sue Galloway, after new figures showed there were between 22 and 26 delayed discharges at York Hospital in March.

Coun Kind said that when the Liberal Democrats were in opposition the group made it clear the responsibility for delayed discharges lay with the executive member for social services.

She has called on Coun Galloway to stand up and say that the buck stops with her over the fact patients were still staying in hospital longer than was needed.

Coun Galloway hit back by saying the latest figures showed there was only one delayed discharge patient in York Hospital that the council was responsible for.

She said that figures for the week ending April 23 showed 17 delayed discharge patients at the hospital, with the council responsible for three of them.

Since those figures were released the three patients the council was responsible for had dropped to only one.

Coun Galloway said: "I do take full responsibility and I am very proud of the achievements that have been made. There has been a lot of hard work on the part of staff at the hospital and at the council."

In their 2003 local election campaign, the Liberal Democrats made "eliminating the delays in discharging elderly people from hospital beds into good quality care facilities" a top priority.

Delayed discharges, or "bed-blocking," happen when an elderly patient is ready to leave hospital, but no care home place can be found for them.

Coun Kind accused the Liberal Democrats of making a promise the group knew it would be unable to keep.

She said: "Now they have to stand up and take responsibility for that. They exploited this issue when they were in opposition, and they are failing on it now they are in power."

But Coun Galloway said: "I do not think one patient is a bad achievement from where we were at the beginning of this year, when there were six we were responsible for."

The £1.6 million redevelopment of former care home Clarendon Court, Haxby Road, into a new care facility should ease York's delayed discharge problems. The new centre is expected to open this summer.

Updated: 10:54 Tuesday, May 04, 2004