HEALTH chiefs have marked the first birthday of the Great Western Hospital with a pledge to drive down waiting lists.

The hospital's acting chief executive, Paul Bentley, wants to see waiting times reduced to six months within two years.

He said: "Our main target is to reduce waiting lists.

"When we moved to this site the average waiting time was 12 months. Now it is nine months, but over the next two years we want to get it down to six months."

This will be achieved by creating extra bed space.

A new 26-bed temporary ward will be opened on Boxing Day. Called the Clover ward, the beds will act as an interim measure until a new 128-bed treatment centre opens in April 2005.

The new beds will be for patients requiring non life-saving surgery, like hip-replacements.

The fight to lower waiting lists was helped when the new 36-bed Woodpecker ward opened in September.

Mr Bentley said: "The new beds will mean that even if we get peaks in emergency admissions, we will still be able to take non-emergency patients.

"We never close the hospital, but that means sometimes we have more emergency admissions than we have beds for."

While he acknowledged there had been problems over the last year, Mr Bentley was adamant the new hospital was a success.

Even before it opened on December 3 last year, the 559-bed building was criticised for not being big enough.

Although it was 10 per cent larger than its predecessor, the old Princess Margaret Hospital, it only had 32 more beds.

In January, Swindon and Marlborough NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, wrote to GPs pleading with them not to admit emergency patients because there were no free beds and patients were being cared for on trolleys.

There have also been complaints about the standard of treatment.

But Mr Bentley was keen to stress that the majority of patients were happy with their care.

He said: "Over the last year, we have dealt with 308,000 patients, and sometimes errors do occur.

"We are sorry these happen, and we always try to put things right.

"But in 99.9 per cent of cases, patients are happy."

To celebrate the anniversary, every member of staff will receive a birthday cake.