237,000 days are lost to bed blocking at West Midlands hospitals

A study by workers union GMB showed an 12 per cent increase in the past five years. In 2011, 209,089 days were lost.

The shock figures prompted Rehana Azam, GMB's national secretary for public services to say: "All people in the Black Country, Staffordshire and the whole country are getting a really bad deal.

"Bed blocking, which is a millstone around the neck of the NHS, has got considerably worse.

"It is now a problem made in Downing Street and the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are wholly responsible for it.

"The severe cuts in local authorities' social services provision is the major contributory factor for bed blocking getting worse.

"For England as a whole bed blocking has increased from 1.4 million days in 2011/12 to over 1.8 million days last year.

"Councils have had to shunt the problem to the NHS. Councils have not been able to accept the patients from the NHS because they have been starved of funds.

"The government has refused to fund the NHS fairly and in recent years, health spending has fallen well short of GDP.

"As the fifth-richest country, it's dire how our old and vulnerable are being treated."

There were many reasons for delaying the discharge of patients from hospitals in 2015/16, including sorting out a place in a care home (27.8 per cent), sorting out care at a patient's home (19.9 per cent), delays in arranging further NHS care (18.3 per cent), inter-agency delays (17.1 per cent), delays due to patient or family choice about future care (12.8 per cent) and other reasons (4.1 per cent).

The figures shown are for England for the year 2015/16.

Nationally, 1,809,883 days were lost last year, an increase of 32 per cent on 2011.

The biggest surge in days lost was in the South East region, where the figure rocketed from 88,902 to more than 350,000.

The South West also saw a large increase, from 83,433 to 257,900.

Meanwhile days lost in the East of England rose from 57,753 to 193,688.

For London there has been an increase of 37,053 days to 174,981, and for Yorkshire and the Humber there has been an increase of 35,293 days to 146,646.

The East Midlands there has been an increase of 27,676 days to 166,823.

The North East was the only region not to see an increase to the number of days lost to bed blocking, reporting a decrease of 16,959 to 43,104.