PRIVATE clinical centres, designed to help the NHS cope with Government waiting list demands, will now not come online until early next year.

Clinical assessment and Treatment Centres (CATs) were expected to be open for business this autumn at sites in Blackburn and Burnley.

But further talks are being held with the scheme's selected partner, South African based Netcare, after key alterations were made to the specifications for the contract.

This means the CATs, which will take on two disciplines, from a list including ear, nose and throat services, general surgery, gynaecology, orthopaedics, rheumatology and urology, will not be open for business until early 2008.

Health leaders have expressed surprise at the development, which has been confirmed by the CATs initiative's commissioning body.

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, in common with health organisations across the country, are working towards an 18-week waiting list target.

Unlike previous deadlines, the clock starts ticking from the moment that patients are referred by their GPs to treatment commencing.

Plans were drawn up for private CATs centres, for which Netcare was named the successful bidder, to help with the backlog but the project has not been without controversy.

Consultants have expressed their misgivings about whether the centres will take away the capacity from acute NHS hospitals to deal with patients in particular areas in future.

Councillors have demanded to know why the NHS itself could not bid for the waiting list work - amid mixed signals from CATs officials about whether that was possible or not.

Since its inception in Lancashire, it has been generally accepted that the CATs scheme would be based at the St Peter's Centre in Burnley.

But a decision on a Blackburn location has been more problematic - the private BMI Hospital at Beardwood, on Preston New Road, was originally earmarked.

Coun Tony Humphrys, vice-chairman of Blackburn with Darwen's health scrutiny committee, has always said that East Lancs NHS staff should have been able to fight for the CATS contract.

He says he is "very surprised" at the latest development and added: "This is a five-year programme and the longer the delay, the less help it is going to be in the short-term as regards waiting list targets."

Coun Gordon Birtwistle, Burnley council leader and a critic of CATs, added: "All they will do is further reduce the resources provided by our local hospitals because they will cherry-pick particular areas which are profitable for Netcare."

But Andrew Bennett, head of commissioning for the independent sector treatment centrs project in Cumbria and Lancashire, said the issue was not only about helping hospitals to meet the 18-week target but to assist them in maintaining that standard of performance up to December 2008 and beyond.

Explaining the changes to Netcare's specifications, he said: "We are asking them to do more diagnostics work and CT scans than we originally stated."