NHS Tayside has defended its record after the LibDems blasted one patient’s “shocking” 849 day wait for treatment.

The individual, who has not been named, has spent 10 times as long as the maximum 84 day waiting time set out by the Scottish Government.

LibDem health spokesman Alex Cole-Hamilton, whose party uncovered the figures, said they revealed “shocking” breaches of the Treatment Time Guarantee.

A total of 12,275 patients across Scotland have had to wait more than six months for treatment since 2016-17.

The LibDems said there are 434 people currently needing treatment who have been on the waiting list for more than a year.

Cole-Hamilton said: “The number of people waiting over a year for procedures, when the law says it should take no longer than 12 weeks, is going up and up. This is disrupting people’s lives and work, leaving them in discomfort and pain.

“Patients are still sent letters telling them of their rights under the law Nicola Sturgeon put pen to paper on. But these letters, like the law itself, are not worth a jot.

“We were told it would only be on rare occasions that things would go wrong.”

The Scottish Government says its £850 million improvement plan will increase capacity and efficiency nationwide.

And, on its case, NHS Tayside said: “Such long waits are rare and can relate to many factors. These include elective treatment being postponed due to a high demand for emergency procedures, medical staff assessing individual patients as being clinically unfit for surgery and patients advising us that they are unavailable for surgery due to personal reasons.

“Where patients are deemed unfit, it may be that further clinical investigations need to be completed before the patient can have their surgery and, even during this time when patients are unavailable, they are still counted in our waiting times figures.

“Our clinicians work really hard to make sure people have their planned surgery as quickly as it can be arranged.”