A DRAMATIC cut in waiting lists for occupational therapy is just one of the ways doctors from Blackburn with Darwen Primary Care Trust made their mark in its first year of operation.

The trust, which celebrated its first anniversary this week, managed to cut the waiting time from 18 months to just six weeks over the year.

It achieved this by employing several locum occupational therapists while trying to fill permanent posts, which proved hard to fill. Therapists work with patients with mental or physical injuries to rehabilitate them and help them live more independently.

The trust also managed to introduce a new opthamology service and set up a new primary care centre at Queen's Park Hospital in Blackburn.

The trust, currently the only PCT in Lancashire, spent its first year working with other groups to produce a community health development project, projects to cut unwanted teenage pregnancies and training events on coronary heart disease. It plans to apply to become a teaching trust on behalf of colleagues in PCGs in East Lancashire, and hopes to achieve it by April 2002.

GP and trust executive committee chairman Alastair Murdoch said: "As a primary care teaching trust we will be able to recruit additional high quality staff attracted by new posts offering wider career development opportunities linked to part time clinical roles and part time teaching roles.

"Joint posts with universities across the north west will offer more training in best practice and evidence-based practice, more emphasis on research and more public health and health promotion training and integration into primary care."

At the trust's annual meeting, chief executive Vivien Aspey said that while it was pleased with its first year, it also wanted to develop public involvement in its second year, among other initiatives.