BURY and Rochdale Health Authority is to get an almost ten per cent rise in its Government cash allocation for 2002/3.

It amounts to £332,127,000, up 9.89 per cent on the previous year.

The key spending priorities are increased capacity and to further reduce waiting times, particularly for cardiac patients.

The Government is also aiming to ensure that 90 per cent of GPs see their patients within 48 hours by the end of next year.

And for the first time some patients will be able to choose where and when they are treated.

Health authorities in England will get at least a 9.3 per cent increase in funds.

Announcing the figures for the region, Health Secretary Alan Milburn said: "I am pleased that health services in the North West will be getting an extra £511.6 million. "These extra resources will help us cut waiting times for treatment and build up the local health service with more doctors and nurses."

He stressed, however, that investment must be coupled with reform,

Mr Milburn also said the Government was publishing proposals which would, for the first time, give patients an explicit choice over where they are treated within the NHS.

He added: "From the middle of next year, every patient in the North West who has waited for a heart operation for six months will be able to choose between hospitals, whether in the public sector, the private sector, in this country or abroad, which can do the operation more quickly.

"The choice will be theirs."

Throughout the North West, health authorities will share an increase in funding of £511.6 million, bringing the total allocation to £5.8 billion.