IT would be churlish not to at least welcome an improvement, no matter how slight, in the bedblocking situation in the county.

After all, our scrutiny of this important issue last month saw the county councillor in charge, Arash Fatemian, take to Twitter bemoaning the fact we never report good news.

But Mr Fatemian, there is still much to do.

The case study of Peter Maulding shows how people are getting trapped in the system for a ridiculous amount of time, like some social services and health vortex.

The county still sits second bottom in the national rankings as the worst performing area in England.

While the crucial statistics to concentrate on are the number of patients and lost time in hospitals rather than a league table, it does at least illustrate that almost every other county in this country is better at dealing with the problem than Oxfordshire. That has to be addressed.

The other concern thrown up by statistics is that while overall in June the number of bedblockers went down, if you look at just those stuck in Oxford Radcliffe Hospital trust facilities, then the number went up.

You can draw a multitude of conclusions depending on what numbers you pick. We just want the county’s officials to tackle this head on so that in six months from now we can see proper, sustainable improvement.