TWENTY patients are being kept in Medway's hospitals every day because there is nowhere else for them to go.

Today's revelation about patients, many elderly, who have to stay in hospital though they are fit to leave came as councillors try to get to grips with a cash crisis threatening Medway's social services.

Senior Medway Cllr Tom Mason said a "drastic shortage" of private homes for the elderly was causing a crisis and blocking beds in hospitals. He said: "Changes in regulations and European directives mean it is very hard to make the homes viable as a business. I have just seen a planning application to knock down a care home in Frindsbury and build flats. And I know that four residential care homes closed in Health Secretary Alan Milburn's own constituency recently."

Patients are having to stay in Medway Maritime Hospital and St Bart's, Rochester, because beds cannot be found for them in nursing homes. Medway has been promised more money for social services after councillors and MPs met a government minister to discuss the authority's £7.5 million social services cash shortfall.

All three Medway MPs and councillors including council leader Rodney Chambers met MP Jacqui Smith, minister of state for health, to discuss the crisis in social services and ask for extra money. The meeting was set up after Cllr Tom Mason, then chairman of social services, asked to see a minister to find out how the council should cope with the shortfall.

He said: "The government was telling us we were spending £5.5m too much on social services (the figure has since risen to £7.5m) and I wanted to ask how we could afford to spend less. Sir Jeremy Beecham, the national chairman of the Local Government Association, said there is a £1b shortfall in social health funding throughout the country."

Last year, the council decided to close four council homes, but and outcry from staff and residents forced councillors into a U turn.

Jacqui Smith said Medway had been recognised as a "hot spot" for the provision of facilities in nursing homes and residential care. And she said Medway would get extra money in 2002/2003.

Cllr Rodney Chambers said the social services shortfall was being funded by the four per cent council tax rise announced last month. The government has given Medway £700,000 for the winter period to ease bed blocking but Cllr Chambers said the money would soon run out.

A Thames Gateway NHS Trust spokesman said: "The problem is that there is not the capacity for these people in nursing homes and the money is helping us to buy space in these homes."