MORE than £70,000 in NHS cash is to be spent on private staff to bring down a waiting list which has run longer than a year.

Local health chiefs have been handed the Government cash in a last ditch effort to slash waiting times and hit an impending target for bone densitometry scans.

The scanner, at Accrington Victoria Hospital, can detect the debilitating bone disease osteoporosis, which affects one in two women and one in five men.

The news was today welcomed as a major boost for patients -- but the failings of the NHS to do the job was slammed as "staggering".

A radiographer and assistant from the private Abbey Gisburne Park Hospital in the Ribble Valley are now staffing the machine two days a week. Previously the NHS was only able to operate the machine one day a week.

The latest figures, for September, show that 583 people in Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale; 248 from Blackburn and Darwen; and 20 in Hyndburn and the Ribble Valley were waiting up to 53 weeks for the scan.

The new cash is expected to cover 1,400 scans and health chiefs hope the waiting list will come down to meet a Government target for April, which states no one should wait more than 16 weeks.

Ribble Valley MP Nigel Evans said he was "delighted" that patients would be seen quicker but added: "I am staggered as to why the NHS can't operate to the same efficiency as the private sector."

Bob Simpson, vice chairman of the Public and Patient Involvement Forum, a watchdog which oversees Blackburn with Darwen Primary Care Trust, said: "We shouldn't have been in this position in the first place."

Derek Holmes, chairman of the PPI for Burney Pendle and Rossendale PCT, said: "I think it is sad. I am highly in favour of a national health service but at the same time we have to be pragmatic to meet increasing demand."

Catharine Oldroyd, chairman of the Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley branch of the National Osteoporosis Society, said: "It is a shame it cannot be done under the NHS but the biggest thing is we are getting the service."

The shortest waiting time since September 2004 has been 49 weeks with the longest wait running as high as 65 weeks.