Patients wait less time for hospital treatment in Oxfordshire than people referred for care in other areas of England.

In the Thames Valley area, including Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, the average waiting time, between being referred and being admitted, is 2.4 months.

The figure is the fourth best in England and below the national average of 2.59 months.

The statistics, revealed by Health Minister John Hutton, reflect improvements in waiting times at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital, Churchill Hospital and Radcliffe Infirmary, and The Horton, Banbury, where no patient has waited longer than a year since August 2002.

Latest figures for the hospitals, overseen by the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust, show more than half the 8,195 people waiting for treatment - 54.5 per cent - were given appointments less than three months after being referred. Another 30 per cent waited between three and five months, 13.5 per cent waited six to eight months, and a few waited up to 11 months.

ORH manager of general and vascular surgery James Ross said waiting times had dropped from a maximum of 18 months to eight months in three years because of a number of initiatives.

More people are treated as day cases and patients are shared out equally among consultants.

Mr Ross said: "Everyone waits a maximum of about eight months and the next target is to get that down to six months. By 2006 we are aiming to get it down further, to three months. It will take a while because of all the other targets we have to achieve.

"We are still working hard. We've failed on a lot of things in the past, so it's important to acknowledge our successes."

Similar improvements have started at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, in Headington, where according to figures for February this year, 48 per cent of the hospital's 2,457 patients waited less than three months.

Another third waited three to five months, 16 per cent were seen in six to eight months, and 1.9 per cent were treated within 11 months.

Mr Hutton's figures for health authority areas reflected waiting times at the end of 2003.

Thames Valley equalled Trent and was beaten only by Cheshire and Merseyside at 2.39, Somerset and Dorset at 2.33 and Birmingham and the Black Country at 2.09.

The worst waiting times were in Kent and Medway at 3.39, the South West Peninsular at 3.08 and Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire at 2.9.