Much-loved breast screening charity BUST has agreed to work more closely with Southend Hospital to end a long-running feud.

The pact follows a report on the charity by the NHS Quality Assurance Service containing 26 recommendations - the most important being that examinations by touch should stop.

Steve Dixon, head of programme development for the Quality Assurance Service, said the hands-on checks, known as palpation, were not effective in detecting cancer and could give women a false sense of security.

He said: "BUST must liaise more carefully with the hospital. There is room for both services but there needs to be more collaboration between the two."

Hostility between the two screening services became public last November when the charity claimed the hospital was upset that women were being poached by BUST.

Andrew Pike, head of operations and service development at Southend Hospital, said he hoped the new agreement would mean BUST would share its resources to help cope with peaks in workload.

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.