There were 29,600 patients waiting more than a year and 3,200 waiting more than 15 months at 31 January.The Health minister John Hutton said: "The fact that nearly three-quarters of NHS trusts now have no patient waiting longer than 15 months highlights the dedication of all doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff to reducing waiting and improving services."Separate health department figures published yesterday showed 95 per cent of patients urgently referred by their GP with suspected cancer were being seen within two weeks, up from 91 per cent for the previous quarter.£ Doctors in Mexico have developed a method of giving the MMR vaccine through an aerosol spray, inhaled in 30 seconds by a child wearing a breathing mask, avoiding the need for an injection. They are to present their findings to the World Health Organisation later this month.. Back Street, Ilmington, is a meandering lane of substantial homes on the edge of a prosperous south Warwickshire village On the corner is Old Pear Tree House, which is not old. Admittedly, the gnarled pear tree in the garden looks as though it has been around for centuries, but the building which carries its name is so new it won't be ready for occupation until at least next month. The company has used her golden jubilee as the spur to produce an assessment of how our homes have changed – or not – over five decades.Away from minimalist loft apartments in revitalised city centres, what's striking is just how traditionalist the so-called New Elizabethans have become. Post-modernism holds sway across swaths of suburban and rural Britain. The big demand now, says Mark Lawson of Knight Frank's Country department, is for "more sophisticated copies of the past".In Ilmington, the Old Pear Tree House, priced at £525,000, fits this description perfectly.

The developer has even installed oak beams above the expansive Cotswold hearths. So how does it differ from a property that would have been new 50, 40 or even 30 years ago? There's a double garage, for a start, with room on the drive for more cars. Fear of crime has increased, so potential intruders will be faced with floodlighting and the latest alarm system. Computer links in the downstairs study meet the growing demand to be able to work from home. And then there are the bathrooms, four of them in a house with five bedrooms. Have we become more obsessed with personal hygiene, or are we simply less inclined to wait?Finally, check out the size of that kitchen and adjoining dining area. "People no longer want to keep their kitchens hidden," Mr Lawson says "Separate dining rooms are out of vogue.

At a dinner party, the cook wants to be in on the conversation."In the Fifties, only the working class tended to live in the kitchen. Front rooms, or "parlours" were left unoccupied except for special occasions – like funerals. In middle-class homes, kitchens were much smaller than other rooms. "The better-off still had staff, so they rarely ventured in there themselves," Mr Lawson says.Walk-in pantries, with their cool tiles and marble slabs, were considered a big selling point in the days when comparatively few families had refrigerators Cooking was done on enamel stoves lit by a match or a spill. Functional cupboards housed meagre rations, which expanded slightly as the decade wore on and were eventually supplemented by exotic treats, like tinned pineapple chunks and evaporated milk.Just across Back Street is a typical Fifties three-bedroomed detached, recently sold by the Stratford-upon-Avon office of Sheldon Bosley. The asking price was £250,000, despite Peel House having been empty for some time and being what estate agents call "an ideal investment purchase" In need of extensive renovation, in other words Other decades have left their mark.

That sliding patio door on metal runners is late Sixties, possibly Seventies. So, too, the fold-up partition which opened up the wall that once divided two distinctively separate rooms.The Sixties changed everything. The tiny television screens of the Fifties expanded, and their clunky, walnut-veneer surrounds contracted. Central heating and double glazing brought the the kind of warmth that would soon eventually free outisde coalsheds as storage space for garden tools There was light, too. Fluorescent kitchen lights cast a lurid glow over Formica® work tops.