A former nurse has hit out at hospital chiefs after waiting more than five hours for a porter to transfer a sick relative to a ward.

Mary Wright, 74, claims her brother, who suffers from cerebral palsy, was stranded in an assessment unit at Airedale General Hospital between 5pm and 10.30pm, before being moved to a more permanent ward.

Easily agitated, she had tried to settle him at the Steeton hospital from 1pm and had ended up relying on friends to take her home. Mrs Wright, a former psychiatric nurse from Silsden, said her brother John McLean, 65, had been admitted after suffering epileptic fits.

"I had to stay with him for the transfer - you can't just put someone with no communication skills into a ward on his own," she said.

"From 5pm we were told a porter would bring another bed for him to be moved. I kept going to ask what was happening and was told there just weren't any porters to do it.

"I wasn't able to get a proper answer from anyone. The administration there is faceless - the nurses were the ones who had to face irritated relatives.

"The whole system is just out of hand - I really felt like discharging him."

On Monday, the Telegraph & Argus reported how Bradford Royal Infirmary had used cleaners as porters after shifts could not be filled because of sickness and leave. Bradford Hospitals NHS Trust confirmed a cleaner had volunteered saying that it was a priority to have a portering service in place and that the cleaner had been supervised. A trust spokesman today said that all shifts for this weekend would be carried out by porters.

Mrs Wright has now submitted a formal complaint to Airedale NHS Trust.

Airedale NHS Trust Business Service manager Barry Rogers denied there was a shortage of porters.

"We were running normal staffing levels at the time," he said. "We have received the complaint which has gone into our system and we are assembling information to prepare a response."