One operation in 50 was cancelled at short notice last year for non-medical reasons, Government figures have revealed.

A shortage of beds has been given as one of the main reasons for the high rate of cancellations in East Sussex, Brighton and Hove.

Figures released by the Department of Health show the health authority had a cancellation rate of 1.91 per cent, significantly higher than the national average of 1.46 per cent.

The statistics, which apply to the year ending in March 2001, put East Sussex and Brighton and Hove Health Authority 26th from bottom in a list of 99 in England.

The number of scheduled operations was 74,472, meaning 1,426 patients faced turning up at hospital and having their operation cancelled on the day.

West Sussex had a better record, with 777 out of 73,713 postponed last year, representing a cancellation rate of 1.05 per cent.

A spokesman for East Sussex, Brighton and Hove Health Authority said: "The health authority has the highest proportion of people aged 85 or over of all the English health authorities, which is 16 per cent.

"Obviously, any reduction in the number of beds available in residential and nursing homes does have an impact on the NHS.

"There have been issues of delayed discharges, whereby people who have been treated in hospital but who are not able to go home, remain in hospital, leading to a backlog in operations."

She said the health authority was working with social services and other agencies to provide home support for elderly people when they left hospital and to stop so many needing to be admitted.

Mike Collinson, chief officer of patients' watchdog the Brighton, Hove and Lewes Community Health Council, said the cancellation of operations due to bed blocking was faced by most health authorities in the South-East.

He said: "The biggest problem is caused by the fact nowadays we tend to run hospitals very close to full capacity so there is no slack in the system.

"Every time someone is discharged from a bed, someone else moves into it, before it has hardly got cold. Twenty years ago, they ran hospitals at more like 80 per cent capacity so there was very rarely a cancellation.

"Any cancellation is dreadful from the patient's point of view. I think we need to open up more care homes and try to run hospitals at a lower capacity so there is some slack in the system but not so much as to become inefficient."

Last week, the Government promised £75,000 each to Brighton Health Care NHS Trust and Hastings and Rother NHS Trust to enable them to appoint trouble-shooting managers to reduce the number of cancellations.