WAITING times are to be cut for patients in need of digital hearing aids in Darlington.

About 4,500 people in the area are waiting for hearing tests, with a significant number waiting more than a year to get a hearing aid.

But health chiefs plan to reduce waiting times for assessment to six weeks by March next year. And by the end of this year, they hope to achieve an overall 18-week wait from referral to fitting of a new digital aid.

"We are embarking upon a major commissioning programme to address a long-term problem across Darlington," said Darlington Primary Care Trust's (PCT) director of commissioning, Cameron Ward.

"This is a problem which is mirrored across the country.

"Our plan has embraced an opportunity to work positively across the public and private sectors to bring some much-needed, additional and very accessible services to people.

"Over the next few months, all patients who are on the audiology waiting lists will be contacted by the PCT to arrange their treatment."

Pam Gazeley, acting director of business development at Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, said: "Long waits have been a real problem for people with hearing loss for a long time, not just in Darlington, but elsewhere too.

"We now have a plan to tackle this so in future patients will not have such an unacceptable wait for their treatment."

Director of public health for Darlington PCT, Tricia Cresswell, said: "This is a big challenge, but we now have the finance and the plans in place to cut down patient waiting times.

"Hearing is a quality of life issue.

"Everyone is determined to make progress on this so that long waits for up-to-date hearing aids quickly become a thing of the past."