Hospital bosses today admitted that up to 1,500 patients had been deliberately taken off waiting list figures to meet Government guidelines.

Their names were removed from lists at Crawley Hospital and East Surrey Hospital, Redhill, during the last quarter of 1998/99.

They remained on an unofficial waiting list and were put back on the official list shortly afterwards.

The cover-up was discovered by Ken Cunningham, chief executive of Surrey and Sussex Healthcare Trust, when he was appointed in August last year.

He called for an independent review by the regional office of the NHS Executive, which today published a report detailing the deception.

Trust chairman Vivien Hepworth said: "I would like to offer a sincere apology to patients of this trust, to local health professionals and to the wider local community for the misreporting of important health statistics that took place here in 1998 and 1999."

She said the report made it clear the former chief executive Isobel Gowan, who left by mutual agreement in April 2000, should take responsibility for what was described as "mismanagement and false reporting" of waiting lists.

Mrs Hepworth said the board had been unaware the waiting list figures had been manipulated when Mrs Gowan left.

The NHS Executive report says: "Patients were being inappropriately removed from the official waiting list in order not to be counted in the trust's figure.

"Similarly, patients who should have been reported as having waited more than 18 months for their operation were not being reported.

"We conclude that almost if not all of the reduction in the waiting list in 1998/99 was achieved through such non-legitimate means."

The trust's waiting list rose dramatically within the first six months of 1999/2000 as patients held back from the waiting list the previous year were reinstated.

Mr Cunningham said that within days of taking over he realised an unusually high number of patients had been suspended from waiting lists.

The trust was reporting a large number of people waiting more than 17 months for treatment but nobody waiting longer than 18 months.

He said: "The report acknowledges that the pressure upon trusts and chief executives to achieve waiting list targets is immense, but it says this does not excuse poor practice.

"The unhappy chain of events began in the mid-Nineties. When I joined in 2000 I recognised there was a problem and dealt with it immediately.

"I am confident our waiting list totals today are absolutely accurate. In September last year 10,000 people were waiting for operations. Today that number has dropped to around 8,300.

"We are on target to meet the Government's pledge of a maximum wait of 15 months by March 2002."

He said every patient on the waiting list had been checked and the trust board was also checking the reasons for any patients taken off waiting lists.