GEORGE Longstaff got VIP treatment when he became the first patient to enter the new £67m Bishop Auckland General Hospital.

Mr Longstaff, from Crook, was presented with a commemorative tankard and met senior officials from South Durham Health Care NHS Trust and Criterion Healthcare plc.

"I saw it being built, but I never thought that I would be the first patient," said Mr Longstaff.

Dr Alan McCulloch, the trust's medical director, presented the tankard and joked with Mr Longstaff that one of the reasons he accepted a job at Bishop Auckland 18 years ago was that he was told there was going to be a new hospital.

A spokeswoman for the South Durham trust said the first phase of the transfer to the new privately financed complex was "going well".

Two wards were the first to transfer from the old site to the new one at the weekend, with an operating theatre and a pathology laboratory.

The rest of the old hospital will move to its gleaming replacement "next door" by July 28.

A significant development will occur today, when the new accident and emergency department will open its doors to patients for the first time, at 7.30am.

The entrance to the new department is off Escomb Road, rather than Westfield Road.

Outpatients will transfer next Monday.