HEALTH secretary Alan Johnson has scrapped plans for private clinical assesment and treatment centres (CATs) in East Lancashire at the eleventh hour.

South African firm Netcare had been due to pilot the CATs centres at St Peter's Health Centre in Burnley and an undisclosed location in Blackburn.

But Mr Johnson has announced that the CATS scheme in Lancashire and Cumbria had been axed - because they would not provide "value for money".

The contentious deal, which would have seen Netcare take charge of a number of diagnostic services currently provided by the Royal Blackburn and Burnley General hospitals, had been dogged by hold-ups.

Tough new 18-week Government waiting list targets were supposed to be assisted by the centres' intervention.

And work was due to begin on the initiative this autumn.

Health campaigners locally have long since maintained that East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust could accommodate the CATs work.

Coun Tony Humphrys, vice-chairman of Blackburn with Darwen health scrutiny committee held meetings with hospitals chief executive Jo Cubbon over the possibility of securing the contract to provide the services.

Patients' forum leaders had expressed "grave doubts" about the CATs plans last year and Burnley council leader Gordon Birtwistle condemned the moves as "privatisation by stealth".

The Department of Health had insisted all along that hospitals could not bid for the work themselves. They only invited tenders from the private health sector.

But, annoucing his decision, Mr Johnson said he had taken advice from the director general of his department's commercial directorate, who had been carrying out a review of schemes nationwide, and found that some did not offer value for money'.

Five other similar diagnostic and treatment service schemes, across the country, were also ditched. Ten remaining projects survived the cull.

Mr Johnson said: "In short, a significant increase in productivity by local NHS providers has substantially reduced the need for the capacity provided by this scheme, with waiting times for most diagnostics reduced from more than one year to currently three weeks on average."

Considerable extra effort was deployed by health chiefs in East Lancashire to meet last year's 20-week waiting list targets - these were achieved in all-but-one discipline.

The location for the CATs centre in Burnley was always going to be St Peter's on Church Street.

But no resolution was ever reached on whether the Blackburn facility would be based at the private Beardwood Hospital, on Preston New Road, or the Royal Blackburn Hospital site.