A hospital trust has been attacked for failing to meet its promised waiting list targets.

Chelmsford West MP Simon Burns has hit out after Mid Essex Hospitals NHS Trust revealed it had 9,967 people waiting for operations at the end of March this year.

The agreed waiting list figure for the trust, which runs hospitals in Braintree, Maldon and Chelmsford, should be a maximum of 9,738 patients.

Mr Burns said today: "While I welcome the fact the overall waiting list figure has fallen from its peak last September, it is still 229 people higher than the figure the Government promised it would be in March," he said.

"I do not blame the hospital staff or the doctors in mid-Essex who have done a magnificent job in very difficult circumstances."

But Russell Griffiths, communications manager for Mid Essex Hospitals, said they had done well to get close to the figure.

"Our trust achieved a massive reduction in numbers of patients on the waiting list," he said.

The peak was in June 1998 when there were 11,833 on the waiting lists and this was reduced by 1,866 at the end of the year.

"In the year to March 1999, the trust treated nearly 28,000 patients who were on waiting lists and at the same time coped with the very high emergency demand in the winter months."

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