Police discovered a stockpile of more than 43,000 tablets at a dead man's home.

The stash was believed to have been amassed over 27 years by a man from Hastings who continuously applied for pills he did not need.

Police discovered £2,000 worth of unopened prescription drugs when they found the unnamed man dead in his bed following concern from neighbours.

The hoard included a ten-year supply of painkillers and a five-year supply of sleeping tablets. The pills were to be destroyed because health chiefs were unable to vouch for their safety.

Health bosses said the case was extreme but symptomatic of a wider problem for the NHS, which was costing it millions of pounds each year in East Sussex alone.

Gillian Ells, prescribing advisor for Bexhill and Rother Primary Care Trust, said: "I have never in my life seen such a vast amount of drugs."

She said a survey carried out last year concluded that £1.3 million worth of prescription drugs were being wasted each year in East Sussex.

She said: "That was just the stuff that people brought in. Had we launched a dump campaign then the figure would have been much bigger. The awful thing is the £1.3 million cannot be recovered, so cannot be spent elsewhere in the NHS."

John Richardson, chief pharmacist at the Conquest Hospital in Hastings, said the NHS spent £6 billion each year on drugs, with up to £600 million wasted.

He said: "Faced with the current overspend the majority of primary care trusts and acute trusts like ours are going through, if we could recoup these huge losses the benefits to the NHS would be massive."