A PRIVATE mental hospital is to expand because the NHS does not have the capacity to care for seriously ill patients.

A chronic lack of NHS beds for patients who require mid to long-term treatment is the reason why the Middleton St George Hospital, near Darlington, is thriving.

The 47-bed private hospital, which includes locked wards for patients detained under the Mental Health Act and an intensive care unit, is to go up to 168 beds in the next year.

Officials from the Cheshire-based company have now showed off their new training centre and outlined ambitious plans for the future.

Officials declined to give details of how much it costs to look after patients but the company's brochure states a daily fee of £345 per patient is charged for providing rehabilitative continuing care.

Affinity Healthcare purchased the former care home complex in 2000 and developed mental health facilities, including a high dependency unit.

Five years on, the demand for mental health in-patient beds from Leeds to the Scottish border is so great that Affinity is massively increasing capacity on the site.

It will demolish most of the existing buildings and replace them with modern hospital blocks.

Hospital director Linda Stephens said 100 per cent of patients were referred from the health service.

"The NHS is overstretched and doesn't have the beds. We have a waiting list but we usually manage to get people in here within a few weeks," she said.

The first phase of the expansion plan is due to open in December next year and the second phase is due to open two years later.

A new NHS mental hospital opened on the outskirts of Darlington last year but it has no more beds than the old Pierremont unit it replaced.

Another new NHS mental hospital is planned for Durham City but is expected to simply re-provide the existing number of beds in the area.

Peter Chapman, regional officer for the Unison union, said: "The general public will be concerned that the private sector is expanding in an area which is traditionally where the NHS would be providing the cover."

He said it was an indication of creeping privatisation in the mental health sector.

The NHS has lacked in-patient capacity since the large old-fashioned asylums such as Winterton Hospital, in Sedgefield, were closed down in the 1990s.