A Wisbech councillor who has spent a month in hospitals in Kings Lynn and Cambridge was finally allowed home today after doctors were able to resolve his follow up care needs.

Councillor Paul Clapp was due to be discharged today from Addenbrooke’s – less than 24 hours after the hospital declared a “major incident” and blocked all bar emergency admissions.

One of the key issues cited by the hospital’s chief executive Dr Keith McNeil was the “record number level of patients whose medical care is finished and whose discharge is delayed”.

Ironically Cllr Clapp, who has been in hospital since mid December with a spine infection, was until last October chairman of the council committee that oversees care in the community.

“I could have gone home sooner had there have been better care in the community to administer the drugs I need,” said Cllr Clapp. “In reality I’ve been occupying for the past few days a bed inside Addenbrooke’s that is urgently needed for others.”

Cllr Clapp, 55, who remains a member of the county council health committee, was admitted to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital at Kings Lynn on December 12. Doctors there tried to find the right levels of antibiotics and other drugs needed to treat him before moving him to Addenbrooke’s for further treatment.

He says he will now face a series of daily visits to a Macmillan nurse at the North Cambs Hospital for drugs to be administered.

“You can sense the crisis within places such as Addenbrooke’s,” he said. “There are patient managers, bed managers and all sorts of people trying to get patients released quicker so the beds can be used.”

He added: “What really angers me though is the money for care in the community – which this Government promised- just isn’t there and it’s causing many of the problems in our hospitals.”

Cllr Clapp said he would be writing a paper on his experiences to go to the Cambridgeshire health committee.

“One of the other issues is about medical notes – I know this is all about being a paperless hospital but the ambulance team moving me from Kings Lynn to Cambridge had to write up notes since they couldn’t access any computer records,” he said.