CAMPAIGNERS claimed North-East hospital services were “on a knife edge” last night after it emerged that one of the region’s biggest NHS trusts ran out of beds earlier this week.

The Northern Echo can reveal that an email was sent to all County Durham family doctors on Monday, warning them there were no beds available.

The problem had been caused by a surge in demand for hospital services, which is being felt across the region – but the British Medical Association said the situation had been made worse by a reduction in the number of medical beds in recent years.

The leaked email said: “There are currently no beds available in the acute trust.

There are currently patients waiting in Accident and Emergency. Please take this into consideration admitting patients.”

Campaigners trying to stop moves to close Bishop Auckland General Hospital’s A&E unit and move all acute medical services to Darlington Memorial Hospital and the University Hospital of North Durham said the situation showed that acute hospital services should be expanded, not cut in County Durham.

“Hospital services are obviously on a knife edge,” said Liberal Democrat councillor Sam Zair, spokesman for the Save Our Hospital campaign in Bishop Auckland.

“It just shows the proposals to centralise services don’t add up. They can’t cope now, so what will they be like when they reduce the acute hospitals from three down to two?”

Councillor Dorothy Burn, 67, from Close House, near Bishop Auckland, who fell ill with a virus earlier this week, said she was horrified when her GP told her she could not be admitted to hospital because all the beds were full.

Coun Burn said: “She said ‘I am sorry, I wouldn’t like to send you to lie in a corridor.’ It is disgusting that we have got to that state of affairs.”

The Northern Echo found that hospitals in Newcastle, Gateshead, Middlesbrough, Sunderland, Hartlepool and Stockton were all experiencing very high levels of demand.

Earlier this week, the North-East Ambulance Service appealed to the public not to ring 999 unless they had good reason, after being swamped with calls in the run-up to Christmas.

A spokeswoman for the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust urged the public to use common sense before going to A&E departments.

“There’s some very poorly people about who really need to be admitted, and there are others who turn up at A&E who really could have looked after themselves or rung NHS Direct,” she said.

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “In recent years, Labour have presided over unprecedented cuts to the number of beds in North-East hospitals.

“Labour’s financial mismanagement of the NHS has led to huge NHS deficits which has caused bed cuts.

“Should we have winter pressures on the scale we saw nine years ago, the NHS will find it immensely difficult to accommodate patients. I despair of ministers’ failure to look beyond their narrow targets and actually understand the risks the NHS runs in times of extreme pressure.”

Dr Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) consultants committee, said: “The message from many of our members is that this is the worst pressure we have had for many years.”

Dr Fielden said too many hospital trusts had bed occupancy levels of 100 per cent, rather than the 85 per cent – the BMA’s recommendation – which meant that trusts could not respond flexibly during periods of peak pressure.

The BMA spokesman complained that too many beds had been taken out of the NHS “largely because of finance”, and that partly explained the current problems.

A spokesman for the County Durham and Darlington trust said: “Thanks to the hard work of staff, we have been able to accommodate all of the patients who have been referred to us for admission within the trust, without having to cancel any operations as a result of the unavailability of beds, or refer patients elsewhere.”

The spokesman pointed out that, last night, the trust had 100 beds available across the trust.

He said the proposed hospital shake-up would improve the way the trust manages emergency care.

“They will help us streamline our emergency medical admissions. We will be investing more money in accident and emergency.

“We will be creating extra capacity at Darlington and Durham by moving planned services to Bishop Auckland.”