IT may come as a shock to some people that a top Bolton consultant claims it would be cheaper to send bed blocking patients to the Ritz Hotel than keep them at the Royal Bolton Hospital.

Tony Banks, vice-chairman of the Royal College of Surgeons, explained that elderly recovering patients in £300 a day acute hospital beds were often simply waiting for Social Services to find them somewhere to go.

And the cost of this bed blocking and its effects meant it would actually be cheaper to keep them in a top hotel than on the wards of the Royal Bolton.

His claims come amid a crisis in our local Health Service, where patients face waits of hours for emergency treatment, and many months for operations.

He blames what he calls this "expensive bed and breakfast" on the closure of nursing and care homes locally, and calls for more to be re-opened to free up these beds.

This latest chapter in the sad story of our local NHS was, however, entirely predictable.

In the past three years, five nursing homes in the Bolton area have closed. Some other nursing homes have opted out of nursing care by registering as rest or care homes. Changes in funding are largely blamed for this.

It is simply not possible to lose such a large chunk of the caring services and pretend that there is no knock-on effect. Now, we are seeing these results in everyday life on the hospital wards and elsewhere.

The staff in Bolton's central hospital do a remarkable job of work, under very stressful conditions. It is unfair to keep piling on the pressure -- and more unfair still to allow them to labour under the burden of being part of the lowest rated hospital in the North-west.

Nor is it any use simply throwing a large amount of money at the Health Service here and hoping it will solve all the problems.

If you take away vital parts of a system's infrastructure, it takes major re-building work in several areas to reinstate an acceptable level of service.

The Registered Nursing Home Association has predicted another major crisis for the town this winter. We urgently need a comprehensive review of services for local elderly immediately, and realistic funding to put back the vital missing links.