Tragic stories of deaths caused by neglect or abuse following adult safeguarding failings have been shared.

The deaths of five people were shared by a team who investigate deaths which often involve self-neglect or mental illness, to improve adult safeguarding.

Chairman of Wiltshire Council's health select committee, which heard the report, Chuck Berry, said: “These are deeply tragic and distressing to hear about. We need to make adult safeguarding better known and talked about. You might see a child showing signs of neglect or abuse in the street, but adults tend to be harder to see because they are not in the public as much.”

The cases included a man from Salisbury who died in a public toilet after being found drunk in the stairwells of a block of flats. He was left in the toilets to sober up by police after officers and paramedics visited him but was found dead the next day.

In a case where an elderly man was known to walk for hours every day and was increasingly vulnerable, Mr Crompton said authorities failed to highlight the increasing danger he was putting himself in before he was hit by a car.

Another man with schizophrenia died penniless when his bank accounts were meant to be temporarily blocked but were never unfrozen.

Signs of self neglect were not acted upon in an appropriate way when an 84 year old women was allowed to go home despite being admitted into hospital and then intermediate care. She later died at home. In another instance a 67-year-old woman with disabilities was discharged from hospital despite being seriously ill and later died at home.

Under the 2014 Care Act, a safeguarding adult review must be carried out if there is a suspicion that someone died because of neglect or abuse.

A review is triggered when two or more agencies, such as care or emergency services, did not work together. This year there have been five instances where deaths have occurred following these instances.

Chair of the adult safeguarding board Richard Crompton said: “These are tragedies but people on the front line are making thousands of decisions every year about safeguarding concerns and 99.5 per cent they are getting them right. We concentrate on the very small number of instances where things go wrong. These are really serious, we do learn from them and this is all about reducing the level of risk.”