ELDERLY dementia patients including an 84-year-old woman were left in the cold for five days after a hospital heating system failed.

Staff and patients in three wards at Ravenscraig Hospital had to cope with plummeting temperatures after a cracked pipe meant no hot water or heating in the Dunrod Unit in the run-up to Christmas.

Bosses at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (GGC) today admitted there was a problem but said it was outwith their control.

Management say that every effort was made to make sure patients were kept warm and comfortable while emergency repairs were carried out.

But Greenock man John Faeley, 59, is outraged that his 84-year-old mum, who has dementia, had to put up with such conditions.

Mr Faeley, pictured, says more should be done to prioritise the care of dementia patients like his mum.

He told the Tele: “Anybody who came out of bed was sitting in chairs or wheelchairs with blankets on. There were emergency convector heaters but they barely took the chill off the air.

“There’s a lot of problems with the whole facility.

“The whole place is falling apart.

“It was built as a pre-fab unit years ago. The staff do the best job they can but the place is just not fit for purpose.

“Dementia sufferers have been called the forgotten people and I think it’s a tag well made.” Health board chiefs have apologised to Mr Faeley and other families over the heating problem but insist that patients were kept comfortable at all times.

A spokeswoman for NHS GGC said: “On Thursday 19 December a heating pipe fractured and there was an issue with the boiler resulting in a heating and hot water failure in the only three wards remaining in use in Ravenscraig Hospital.

“NHS engineers effected a repair but unfortunately the problems happened again and the system was not able to be made fully operational until Monday 23 December.

“Clearly our priority was that the patients in the three wards were kept warm and to this end electric heaters were brought into the wards and extra blankets were delivered to the hospital.

“In regard to the complaint from the son of an elderly patient, our Lead Nurse at Ravenscraig offered to meet him to apologise for any inconvenience that the heating problem had caused.” The hospital is due to close in 2015 when a new £6 million purpose-built facility opens on the site of the former nurse complex at Inverclyde Royal.