ELDERLY patients are occupying medical beds at Northallerton's Friarage hospital for up to eight months because of a lack of funding to allow them to move into nursing homes.

Lengthy waits for cash to buy places at homes mean many must remain on acute wards, blocking beds otherwise available to medical patients.

While hospital management would not disclose how many people currently awaited transfers, social services said the problem had worsened in the last three months.

Mr Hugh Williams, community care group manager with North Yorkshire social services, confirmed some elderly patients were waiting up to eight months.

"There is a problem with funding and we are trying to manage it as best we can within a very difficult situation," he said. "We have fortnightly meetings with Friarage staff to look at the people who are waiting and try as far as we can to take account of individual circumstances."

Social services bore the brunt of financial cutbacks by the county council earlier this year, when its budget was sliced by £1.6m after a government grant increase failed to cover inflation. The service had already endured a £3.5m cut in 1998.

"There are discussions going on at a very senior level between North Yorkshire county council and the health authority and people are aware that this is a difficult problem that needs to be eased if at all possible," said Mr Williams.

There was a danger the problem would worsen again in winter, when more hospital admissions were likely.

One patient caught up in the funding void is 91-year-old Mr David Thomas, who has been on an acute medical ward at the Friarage for seven weeks after being admitted for a severe urinary infection.

His daughter, Mrs Anne Stansfield, of Middleham, said the family was appalled to learn he faced a six- to eight-month wait to go into a nursing home.

"We are advised by the nursing team that he now needs 24-hour nursing care, which we are unable to provide safely at home," she said. "We face months of sitting all day by the side of his hospital bed on an acute medical ward, where the nurses are so busy that it is impossible to give him much beyond his basic needs.

"Normally sociable and cheerful, under these conditions he has become confused and upset. There has been a marked deterioration in his mental state."

A nursing home at Thornton Rust, 20 minutes from Mrs Stansfield's home, had space for Mr Thomas.

She was also concerned that her father was blocking a bed which should be available for another patient, possibly someone awaiting an operation.

Mrs Elaine Wyllie, assistant general manager at the Friarage, confirmed the hospital monitored the numbers of people waiting for social services funding but said the health trust was not prepared to give out the figures.