Hospitals are being turned into long-stay institutions, amid a crisis in social care, with more than 17,000 people now stuck on hospital wards for at least three weeks, official figures show.

The NHS figures show that across the country, bed occupancy levels are already approaching 95 per cent, with 18 hospital trusts reaching 100 per cent capacity last week.

The new data - the first ever analysis of the numbers stuck in hospital for such periods - shows the number of “long stay patients” already rising as winter sets in.

NHS trust chief executives said pensioners admitted to wards with relatively minor health problems were ending up dispatched to care homes, weeks later, because they had lost so much mobility while trapped needlessly.

In many cases, elderly people were ending up in such institutions when they could have left hospital weeks earlier, if only they had been given help at home, they said.

The statistics show some NHS trusts with hundreds of “long stay” patients, with more than 500 such cases at Leeds Teaching Hospitals trust, and more than 480 at Barts Health trust in London.

They also show 20,000 ambulance delays in the last fortnight, prompting Labour to warn of a “winter of misery” ahead.