PATIENTS will have to wait no longer than six months for operations at Worcestershire's hospitals from March, it has been revealed.

Worcestershire Royal Hospital, Kidderminster Hospital, and the Alexandra, in Redditch, are all on target to slash nine-month waits by a third.

County health chiefs hope that the shorter wait will be introduced in March - nine months ahead of the schedule set by the Government which has told hospitals they have until the end of the year to achieve the target.

"Shorter waiting times for elective procedures is good news for patients across Worcestershire," said a spokesman for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the hospitals.

"This has been achieved by an enormous amount of hard work by staff at all three of our hospitals.

"The national target is to have no patients waiting longer than six months by the end of 2005.

"We remain on course to hit that target by the end of March, but it will be extremely challenging, particularly since at the same time we are making so much progress on elective waiting times, we are also dealing with large numbers of emergency patients."

Worcester Labour MP Michael Foster said he had been informed of the progress by Michael O'Riordan, chairman of the trust.

Mr Foster said: "It is a real achievement to have cut waiting times in this way. Six months is still too long to wait, but compared to two years, patients can see that our NHS is getting better.

"It is a real credit to our local trust, to the staff, both medical and non-medical, to have set about the task of cutting waiting times even faster than the Government insists."