Millions of pounds will be spent in the year ahead to help tackle hospitals' bed-blocking crisis.

East Sussex County Council is setting aside an extra £8.3 million for its adult social care services which will lead to an extra 150 nursing and care home places.

There are around 66 patients at Eastbourne District General Hospital and the Conquest Hospital in St Leonards who are ready to leave but have to wait for a nursing home place before they can be discharged.

East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs both hospitals, says the delays caused by people taking up beds have a knock-on effect on its waiting lists and the length of time patients spend in accident and emergency before a bed becomes available.

There were more than 100 bedblockers at the trust at one point earlier this year and over a period of less than five months hundreds of operations were cancelled.

Keith Glazier, the county council's lead member for children's and adults' services, said: "Last year we helped more than 1,000 people leave hospital.

"Most of them were given the care and support they needed to enable them to return to their own homes.

"The problem of bed blocking cannot be solved just by us spending more money.

"We are working with the primary care trusts to develop community services that prevent avoidable admissions to hospital but the hospitals also need to manage their admissions more effectively so people don't end up in hospital if they don't need to be there.

"The Government also needs to give us funding that recognises the true costs of caring for the high proportion of very elderly people in East Sussex.

A hospital trust spokesman said: "We will continue to work closely with our partners in social services.

"We are very supportive of additional resources which the county council has put into place in order to meet their commitments.

"We will be working with them to monitor the impact of delayed transfers of care within our hospitals.

"A number of actions have been taken to reduce the avoidable admissions into hospital and improve the discharge process.

"These have proved successful and evidence suggests there are virtually no inappropriate admissions to hospital.

"It is certainly true that more community services would offer patients an alternative to hospital admission as well as make possible earlier discharge."

Hastings and Rye MP Michael Foster is meeting the Government's social care minister Liam Byrne to press the case for a fairer deal on funding for the elderly in East Sussex.