People with cataracts are having their sight restored at a new centre in Bradford.

The service at Westwood Park Clinic at Clayton Heights is the only place in the Bradford area where people can have cataracts removed without going to hospital. The centre is a joint venture between Bradford South and West Primary Care Group (PCG) and Bradford Community NHS Trust.

It opened in April, offering outpatient appointments to treat conditions including bowel, skin and hearing problems.

Now a clinic where cataracts are removed has been launched and about 13 patients have undergone surgery.

It means some patients are treated within 12 weeks of their in-patient appointments, compared to more than a year which some Bradford GPs claim is the length of time some of their patients have waited for the same treatment.

Ron Broadbent, who went to have a cataract removed from his left eye, said the cataract clinic was a good idea.

"From seeing the doctor to coming here today it's been a couple of months at the most," he said.

Mr Broadbent, 78, who was almost blind in his left eye, said the clinic was so close to his home he had walked there. Had his appointment been in hospital he would have had to get a taxi or get one of his sons to take him there.

Consultant ophthalmic surgeon Colin Hutchinson, who works at the Royal Halifax Infirmary and Huddersfield Royal Infirmary as well as Westwood Park Clinic, said the clinic was less intimidating than a hospital because it was much smaller. And because it was closer to many residents' homes in the Bradford South and West PCG area it reduced the problem of transport for them.

Andrew Morris, chief executive of the PCG - which is made up mainly of GPs and aimed at better addressing health needs in the area - said: "It means that patients can be treated locally when they don't need to be in hospital."

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