Hospital chiefs offered patients surgery on dates when they were on holiday in a bid to cut waiting lists, a new report claims.

Staff at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare Trust - which runs Crawley Hospital and East Surrey Hospital, Redhill - phoned patients to find out when they were on holiday.

They then offered those dates for treatment, according to a report published today by the National Audit Office.

When the patients turned the dates down they were sent to the back of the queue.

That is just one of the allegations made against Surrey and Sussex Healthcare Trust in a report published today by the Government's public spending watchdog.

The Trust is one of nine in the country which have come under fire in the report for fiddling waiting list figures to meet tough targets.

The report reads: "At Surrey and Sussex NHS Healthcare Trust patients were intentionally held back from being added to the waiting list, with only urgent patients being added.

"Allegedly patients were deliberately offered admission during their known holiday dates and then suspended for a longer period when admission was declined, and patients were offered non-existent dates to come in at short notice and when those dates were declined their records amended to hide the fact they would breach the 18-month maximum wait."

The report details an investigation into how 1,800 names were removed from the waiting lists at Crawley and East Surrey Hospital in 1998 and 1999.

An inquiry team headed by the Regional Waiting List Task Force, and including representatives from the National Patients Access Team, found patients were "inappropriately" placed on a suspended list where they could remain indefinitely or until they were contacted by the Trust.

The report says: "These procedures were used to avoid reporting breaches of the 18 month maximum waiting time."

It said a reduction in waiting list numbers should have resulted in an increase in elective operations, but this number fell rather than increased.

The report found: "Almost all of the reduction of 1,800 in the waiting list during 1998-99 was achieved through non-legitimate means ... during its first year the trust had created a large backlog of patients who still required treatment but who were not reported as being on the waiting list."

The report concluded it was highly likely that breaches of the 18-month maximum waiting list occurred, although none were reported to the trust board, health authority, NHS regional office or Department of Health.

The inquiry found evidence to suggest patients inappropriately suspended were recorded on unofficial lists so that treatment was not affected.

But the report says a number of patients were clearly denied the right to be treated within 18 months. There were thought to be 132 unreported cases.

The inquiry found that the trust's then chief executive, Isobel Gowan, should take responsibility for the mismanagement and false reporting of waiting lists.

In April last year Mrs Gowan received a £151,000 golden handshake as she left Surrey and Sussex Healthcare Trust.

At the time she gave no reasons for leaving her £92,000-a-year post and the trust was unaware figures had been manipulated.

The manipulation of the waiting list figures came to light when Ken Cunningham took from Mrs Gowan. He was concerned at the number of patients suspended from the list and called for an investigation.

Commenting on the report today today the NHS Chief Executive Nigel Crisp said: "I expect, and the public has the right to expect, higher standards of NHS services than this."

He said anyone found manipulating figures would be sacked immediately.