If one of your reporters sends me an e-mail at 5:15 pm asking about one of the many thousands of clients for whom we provide care and wants an answer for the following morning’s paper, he should not be surprised if I am unable to reply while I am on a train.

I have great sympathy for anyone caring for a family member with alzheimer’s.

My partner and I have seen, first, my father, and later, her mother succumb to this dreadful disease and I know how difficult it is to secure care.

I regret that there is just not enough money to manage the flow of patients in either the health or the local government system. I am pleased to learn that Mr Maudling was well looked after in hospital and is safe.

I acknowledge that, financially, it makes no sense for long stays in hospital that cost more than social care but, if we don’t have the funding to purchase that care immediately we are all in difficulty.

We are working hard with the Radcliffe Trust to identify how we can reduce delays and will do all we can to find social care places for people in the highest need, but we are trying to operate a system that is just about bust and we have to work out how to improve it and secure more funding as we have more elderly people.

Keith R Mitchell Leader, Oxfordshire County Council, County Hall, Oxford NB Editor's note: Mr Mitchell submitted this letter to the Oxford Mail newsdesk at 8.30am on July 27, the day of our front page article ‘We’ve been let down’.

The story concerned bed-blocking and the personal story of Diane Mauldling, from Bicester, who wanted answers as to why her husband Pete had spent 12 weeks in hospital unnecessarily. She believed Mr Mitchell had let her husband down.

Our reporter attempted to contact Mr Mitchell for a response on July 26, the day before publication, but he was not available at the time.