A WIDOW whose husband's body was kept on a hospital bed for four days today hit out at health bosses for telling staff to leave corpses on wards.

The woman said she was sickened by the Evening Telegraph revelation that cash-strapped bosses are not paying for enough night porters to move bodies to the morgue at Queen's Park Hospital, Blackburn.

The 53-year-old widow spoke as an NHS chief confirmed a body had been left for eight hours last Wednesday because of the staffing problems a delay that was "unacceptable."

The Accrington mother, who did not want to be named, said bosses had promised her that no family would have to go through the same ordeal after she lost her husband, aged 52, in 2002.

She said: "When I saw the headline in the Telegraph I thought I had read it wrong. I just couldn't believe something they told me was a one-off and would never happen again has become hospital policy."

Her husband died from heart problems in March 2002, but when funeral directors came to collect the body after the weekend they found it had not been placed in a refrigerator.

Today hospital bosses said they could not confirm details of the case because the Blackburn Trust involved had since merged with Burnley to form East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust. But the undertaker who dealt with the body said it was so badly decomposed it could not be placed in an open coffin.

The widow said: "I was absolutely livid. I had been deprived of my opportunity to say my last goodbye because the body was in such a bad state of decomposition."

A letter sent last month to porters said they should ask nurses who request a body to be moved whether "it can wait until morning staff come on duty". Two porters are needed to move a body.

The instruction was because there was "now not the funds or the staff to bring someone in on overtime to cover," said the letter, from domestic and portering manager Karen Goss.

Accrington Willows Lane undertaker Raymond Wolstenholme, who dealt with the body, today said: "The body went completely off because it was not put in a refrigerator.

"It started to decompose. We couldn't have an open coffin or dress it properly."

Hospital bosses originally said that they were not aware of any bodies being left following the instruction, but yesterday confirmed one body had been left overnight last week for eight hours.

Following information presented by The Lancashire Telegraph, East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust confirmed a body had been left from 11pm last Wednesday to 7am on Thursday.

It is believed the body was on C4, a general medical ward.

The Trust's head of clinical care and governance, Lynn Wissett, said: "We did find evidence that there had been an unreasonable delay in transferring the patient from the ward to the hospital mortuary.

"The investigation also suggested that this delay was due in part to the fact that only one porter was on duty at Queen's Park Hospital that night.

"Although contingency arrangements were in place to cope with just this eventuality they were not implemented."