RESIDENTS are being urged not to clog up the Accident & Emergency department at Worcestershire Royal Hospital after health chiefs revealed they have run out of beds.

Hospital chiefs cancelled 20 operations and have been working round-the-clock in a bid to free up beds at the Royal and the Alexandra, in Redditch.

County health organisation chiefs and bosses from West Midlands South Strategic Health Authority were called into an emergency meeting yesterday after Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust announced the "major incident".

Trust spokesman Richard Haynes stressed the hospitals were "definitely not closed", but added emergency patients were being given priority.

"We need to control the flow of patients, so what we're trying to do is to raise people's awareness they don't always need to go to hospital - there may be other options such as pharmacies, GPs and minor injuries units," he said.

The trust is working with social services to get rid of "bed-blockers" - particularly the elderly who are well enough to leave hospital but too ill to return home.

"We know there's still a significant number of patients at the hospitals who would be more appropriately cared for elsewhere, either in community hospitals, nursing homes or their own homes with a suitable social services care package," he said.

Independent Wyre Forest MP Dr Richard Taylor said the problem was due to the Royal being built with too few beds and the loss of blue light services at Kidderminster.

But Mr Haynes refuted Dr Taylor's claims, adding: "It's a time of the year when we become very busy, there's no single reason for it, there's no epidemic or anything, but it's a situation faced by lots of trusts across the country."