A SON has said he will not be taking his 82-year-old mum to Warrington Hospital again after she had four operations cancelled in four months.

Alan Clarke said that he will also be seeking an injunction to stop ambulances taking Mary Bennett, from Brookvale, Runcorn, to the Lovely Lane hospital.

The former hotel manager had to leave his job 18 months ago to care for his mum and said he cannot afford to keep driving to the hospital only for procedures to be called off.

Mr Clarke said: “Before the latest scheduled operation, I phoned in the morning to see if it would be going ahead.

“But after three hours of waiting they said we would have to go home because there were no beds. I was so annoyed it had happened again.”

The great grandma and mum-of-five had an endoscopy cancelled because staff did not realise she had a heart problem, an angiogram was re-arranged when there were no beds following a large number of emergency admissions and more recently an investigative bladder procedure was cancelled twice.

Mr Clarke argues that his mum, who used to work as a cleaner in hospitals, should be a priority case as she suffers from several conditions including leaky heart valves and asthma.

A spokesman for the hospital apologised and said procedures are only cancelled with ‘good reason’ and patients are offered another appointment within a maximum of 28 days.

They added: “We had a spell of extreme emergency pressure during that week with a spike in the number of seriously ill patients needing very urgent admission to hospital.

“These patients had to take priority and we then had to make the difficult decision to cancel some procedures.

“We totally understand the family’s frustration and our staff took time to explain the situation on the day.”