Upholland

A man from Barrow has been sent to a secure hospital for "a very, very long time" for killing his own father days after being wrongly released from a mental health unit.

Jonathan MacMillan, 28, had previously admitted the manslaughter due to diminished responsibility of his father John on Provincial Street in Barrow in June.

PA Media

Today two expert psychiatrists told Preston Crown Court that Jonathan MacMillan was severely mentally ill and neither could understand why he'd been let out of the Cygnet Health private hospital in Kent.

The Recorder of Preston, Judge Mark Brown, handed down an order detaining him in a secure hospital, saying MacMillan should never have been released into the community.

NHS England says an independent Investigation is under way but is "in its very early stages", and expressed its condolences to John MacMillan's family.

A man from Barrow who admits killing his father just days after being wrongly released from a mental health unit is due to be sentenced today.

Cumbria Police

Jonathan MacMillan, 28, had been in Cygnet Health's private hospital in Maidstone, which takes in NHS patients.

At a previous court hearing MacMillan denied murder but admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and the case was adjourned until today.

The judge, the Honorary Recorder of Preston, Mark Brown, told the court the defendant was not due to be discharged until July, but had been sent home early in error, something the judge said was an "appalling state of affairs".

NHS England has commissioned an independent investigation into what the judge called "a serious failing by the mental health services".

Simon Mabon, from Lancaster, was travelling from Macclesfield to Lancaster, a journey that should have taken about 90 minutes.

It ended up taking about eight hours.

When he finally arrived at Lancaster, he kindly spoke to BBC News.

The overhead power lines came down on a section of track between Preston and Lancaster, following the failure of a train in the area.

Three Virgin Trains services were caught up in the ensuing disruption. Network Rail were unable to immediately fix the problem.

A rescue locomotive was sent to retrieve two Virgin trains, whilst the third involved a "train to train" evacuation.

We’re very sorry for the experience of customers affected by today’s disruption. We’re working closely with our partners to get customers from the affected trains to the nearest station so they can continue their journeys.

We have just spoken to a passenger who was on board one of the trains stuck between Preston and Lancaster.

Simon Maybon, from Lancaster, said his 90-minute journey ended up taking about eight hours.

We got to Preston and were told the train was cancelled so we were instructed to get onto a different train and we got onto that train and we sat there for about two hours waiting because there was a broken down train in front of us.

Then we eventually started moving and we made about 10 minutes progress and then it stopped and they put some announcements over the tannoy saying there were some technical issues, that there was no power, that we were stuck here for the foreseeable. That was about 11 o'clock and then we were stuck on that train for the following three, three-and-a-bit hours with no air conditioning, no toilets really – they stopped working very quickly.

We got a little bottle of water which I guess was very nice of them, the card machine wasn’t working in the food carriage. There were kids there, families, lots of people who were pretty frustrated. I guess I was lucky because I got on later because there was a chap next to me who set off at 5:30.

At about 2:15 we were told we were getting on a different train, we were evacuating from one train to another, that took about an hour. We got evacuated onto another train. And then we were just left, we didn’t really know what was going on, the staff didn’t know what was going on or they didn’t tell us very much. We were 2 miles out of Lancaster, but the train was going to go back to Preston. Fortunately, we started moving just after that and I’ve just pulled into Lancaster now.

"Thousands of people" are stranded at Preston railway station after overhead lines came down between Preston and Lancaster, one affected passenger has said.

Sharon Breward she said the queue for replacement bus services was "so far out of the station you cannot see the end".

The NHS has been accused of a catalogue of errors by the parents of a Kendal man who died in the Royal Blackburn Hospital waiting for a delayed operation.

Family photo

Mark Stuart needed urgent surgery but had to wait for five days and was told not to eat or drink anything,

Staff failed to give him any nutrition or enough fluid through the drip in his arm and records suggest at one point he went 20 hours without fluid.

The East Lancashire Hospitals Trust has apologised, saying it acknowledges the care fell below its usual standard, but Mark's father, Richard Stuart, says he won't be satisfied until some of those who failed him face prosecution.

Mark said he was in the worst pain he had ever had in his life but took over an hour to get a hurse to see him, they were extremely cruel to him, they made him suffer."

BBC

An investigation into the death of a young, autistic man - left starving and desperately thirsty in hospital while waiting for a delayed operation - is to be reviewed.

Mark Stuart spent five days in agony and died following a catalogue of failings by NHS staff. His parents say they have been battling for answers for four years.

Read: Our son's final days