HEALTH officials have refused to accept the building due to house North Staffordshire's new £30 million cancer centre because of "serious deficiencies".

Builders Laing O'Rourke should have handed over the building last week to bosses at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire so it could be commissioned for use by patients.

But problems in the system which cools key medical equipment has held up the process.

However, officials say the hitch is unlikely to delay the opening of the centre to its first patients next month.

The centre, on the City General site skirting the A34, is part of the area's £400 million "superhospital".

Project director Andrew Underwood told the hospital trust board that the building had not been accepted because the pumps were too small to properly drive chillers cooling radiation machines, called linear accelerators.