EMERGENCY admissions to Whipps Cross University Hospital had to be diverted for 15 hours during the weekend because of a lack of available beds.

Ambulances were sent to neighbouring hospitals between 8pm on Saturday and 11am on Sunday, one of the busiest times of the week for A and E admissions.

The hospital trust admit that the crisis was caused by extraordinary circumstances but emphasised that patients who walked into the hospital were still treated as normal.

Sources in Whipps Cross' A and E department say the hospital has been operating at peak capacity throughout the winter.

They told us: "During Saturday things were very rapidly building to the point where taking on any further patients would have been unsafe.

"Senior medical staff were going around the wards that morning and asking the senior nurse if there was there anyone that could go home. But there wasn't.

"It wasn't people blocking beds, or being there that didn't need to be. It wasn't delayed discharges and inefficiency, people were working very hard.

"It was just the sheer lack of beds in the wards."

Our sources described ambulances queueing up at the back door of the hospital, while patients who had been assessed and treated by A and E waited on trolleys in the corridor to be transfered into the wards.

"At 8.30pm on Saturday, the only two empty beds in the hospital were in A and E resuscitation.

"The hospital felt it was unsafe to continue to take people, and they made the right decision," they said.

Charlotte Monro, head of staff side and a prominent member of the Save Whipps Cross campaign, said the events emphasised the need for more resources to be committed to the hospital.

She said Whipps Cross is not funded to cope with the demands of the population it serves.

Ms Monro said: "People shouldn't have to be diverted from their local hospital.

"This is the result of the ward closures of the last two years. We've lost about 100 beds since summer 2006.

"The PCT is supposed to be providing services so people don't have to come to hospital - obviously that is not the case.

"You expect pressure when there's a flu epidemic in the community, but we're not aware of one.

"Whipps Cross needs investment in staff, it needs to be able to reopen beds and staff them properly. It needs more funding.

"It has been demonstrated that it is needed as an acute hospital. It needs another 32 beds - a ward and a half - across medicine and surgery."

A spokesman for Whipps Cross Hospital said: "There is not one reason for this - it is a combination of factors, and we can't predict when people are going to come in.

"We work to high capacity all the time. Hospitals are quite flexible organisations - bed numbers are not the critical element here.

"The main pressure was on A and E.

"The trust would like to apologise to the small number of patients who may have been affected by the temporary diversion."

He confirmed that the hospital trust was looking to expand its capacity in terms of both wards and nurses."