Winchester'S drugs service is seeking extra funds to reduce the misery of people waiting months for treatment.

The Community Substance Misuse Service, based in Romsey Road, has been criticised for allegedly failing heroin addicts who have to wait up to ten months for the substitute methadone.

The city's MP Mark Oaten is demanding that extra cash is pumped into the service.

Manager Rob Tipper said the service was fully stretched and doing all it could to help drug addicts. But it was operating on a budget of only £180,000 a year

Mr Tipper said he had applied for more money from the North and Mid Hampshire Health Authority

Heroin addiction is a chronic problem in Winchester. The service has some 200 clients on its books. It currently has funding for 90 to be treated with methadone.

In August the waiting list grew to 76 people but has now dropped to 55, said Mr Tipper.

The waiting list has become a problem in the two years since Winchester GPs stopped prescribing methadone.

But the situation is likely to improve when a specialist mental health trust covering most of Hampshire and part of Wiltshire is set up next year.

Mr Tipper said: "We are as frustrated about the fact we have a waiting list. It is not the way we want to provide a service.

"The solution is not to provide more prescriptions, we need more staff to work with clients and provide counselling.

"That helps clients get back from a chaotic lifestyle to a stable lifestyle where they don't need to fund the purchase of often-impure street drugs, damaging their health, sometimes involved in crime. We have many examples of people living drug-free lives."

Mark Oaten believes the length of time addicts are being forced to wait for treatment is "disgraceful".

He said: "It is one of the most appalling figures I have learned of this year.

"In that waiting period the addict can lose their job, probably their family and they are in the cycle of having to fund a drug habit of £40 to £50 a day.

"It is a cycle of events which means the person who could have been treated in week one is a very different kind of person after 50 weeks of waiting."

He is also critical of the time it takes the health authority to make a decision on the extra funding.

He said: "I am getting concerned that it is taking so long for the Health Authority to respond but I am hopeful that some emergency money can be found."