IT is a plainly ludicrous situation when a region like ours, with a notoriously poor record for dental health, finds itself for the second time in a month having new and expensive treatment facilities standing idle for months because of suffocating bureaucracy.

The latest service trapped in this absurd state of affairs is the £750,000 new emergency dental services suite at Blackburn's Queen's Park Hospital, designed to help the 200,000 people in East Lancashire who do not have a dentist.

It has been ready since October. The money to run it is there too.

But health chiefs cannot open its doors or hire a dentist to run it because they are still waiting for the Department of Health to give its consent. And it is ten whole months since it was asked for its approval.

Time and again, health chiefs and the patients' watchdog body have called for an answer. But despite also pressing Blackburn MP, Home Secretary Jack Straw and other local MPs to intervene, they are still waiting.

And no matter what the official explanation may be, it is an intolerable situation that exists. Indeed, it is one that rubs salt in an already-existing wound as far as East Lancashire dental services are concerned.

For only weeks ago, it was revealed that 150 children with serious teeth problems in Blackburn, Hyndburn and the Ribble Valley have been kept waiting in pain for up to four months while a new facility at Blackburn Infirmary for them to have teeth extracted under general anaesthetic is left unused.

It was meant to open a month ago, but might not start until April -- because the funding of day-to-day running costs has not been finalised by the health authority and the two health trusts involved.

Bureaucracy gone mad, health watchdog Nigel Robinson complained at the time. And it is doubly so now when people in East Lancashire suffer more pain and delay at the hands of the gummed-up Department of Health.

Will Mr Straw pick up the phone and ask his health supremo Cabinet colleague to get a move on?