A council has been fined £30,000 for failing to find suitable accommodation for a teenager with learning difficulties, which forced him to spend 18 months on an adult psychiatric ward.

Hospital staff were unable to care for the 18-year-old autistic boy who was constantly sedated and denied his liberty, his mother told a local government ombudsman.

Bolton Council said it made mistakes and that it had changed its procedures for dealing with people with complex needs.

Ombudsman Patricia Thomas found the council guilty of maladministration causing injustice.

The teenager, who needed constant support, was sectioned within days of leaving a residential school in January 2002. The next month a mental health tribunal recommended the teenager be transferred from the hospital to an appropriate home as soon as possible.

But the council took more than a year to deal with the recommendation and failed to answer an official complaint by the boy's mother within time limits.