OXFORD’S world renowned Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre (NOC) has announced that it made a surplus in the last financial year.

Last year a question mark hung over the long term future of the NOC as an independent trust, after staff and patients learned that a timetable to wind it up had been drawn up.

A key report had found the NOC trust was no longer financially viable in the face of mounting competition from a new private treatment centre.

But the specialist Headington hospital has now announced it finished the financial year with a small surplus of £60,000.

NOC chief executive Jan Fowler said the surplus had been achieved despite the loss of £6m in Government funding — money previously given to orthopaedic hospitals that undertook costly specialist work.

Ms Fowler said: “We have had to put a lot of work into reducing our costs. We have also expanded our referral base.”

The NOC has signed a contract with the Ministry of Defence resulting in more servicemen and women being sent to Oxford for treatment, with more patients also coming from abroad.

Ms Fowler said the loyalty of local patients had also been key, defying predictions that much of the NOC’s work would go to a new private orthopaedic centre set up in Banbury.

Ms Fowler said: “People from Oxford and other parts of the county have not chosen to go there but have carried on coming here.

“Treatment centres can only do a certain level of work.

“There is also the fact that people coming to the NOC for routine treatments like hip operations say they have a good experience here.

“We have a good reputation.”

She expressed her gratitude to patients and local campaigners who pressed the South Central Strategic Health Authority to drop any plans to wind up the NOC as a trust.

The NOC had been part of the bid by Oxford’s main hospitals to form a ground breaking academic super trust.

The bid by Oxford University and local hospitals to become one of Britain’s first academic health science centres was rejected by the Government in March.

Ms Fowler said the NOC would be part of a second bid, expected to be submitted over the next 18 months.

The bid will again be submitted by the university, the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust and the NOC, with Oxford Brookes University and Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust also involved.