HEALTH Secretary Alan Milburn yesterday hailed success in hitting key waiting list targets as evidence that the NHS Plan is on course.

Mr Milburn used the week before the Budget to showcase both falling waiting times and increased NHS activity, which is set out in a report on the health service by NHS chief executive Nigel Crisp.

Average waiting times and maximum waiting times have fallen among in-patients and out-patients in the last year, it says.

Waiting times to see a GP, ambulance waiting times and bed blocking were also falling and the number of prescriptions was up.

The target that no patient should wait more than 15 months for an operation by March 2002 had been all but met with only two patients waiting over the limit.

Last year, 80,000 patients waited more than 15 months for an operation.

A second target, to ensure nobody waits more than six months to see a hospital specialist for the first time, has not been met.

About 500 patients are waiting more than six months for a consultation, compared with 400,000 patients last year.

And bed blocking has fallen, with 6,200 patients delayed on any one day in September to 4,500 at the end of March.

But Dr John Canning, a Middlesbrough GP and British Medical Association spokesman, said: "From what we see around us there has not been a huge improvement in services."

There were now "a variety of ways" to manage lists which led to a reduction in numbers, he added.

Heart patient Edna Irwin, 70, from Darlington - who says she waited two years for surgery after "a misunderstanding" over waiting times - said she was "quite sure" she was not the only patient to vanish from official waiting lists.