MANY hospitals in the region are breaking EU laws designed to limit the working hours of junior doctors, The Northern Echo can reveal.

The deadline for compliance with the new legal limits was yesterday - but several of the region's biggest hospitals have admitted they still have not hit the target.

The EU adopted the laws to cut the working hours of junior doctors three months ago. It decided that by 2009 no junior must work more than 48 hours a week - a far cry from the 80-hour weeks that were once commonplace.

As a first step, a limit of 58 hours has to be introduced and the deadline for doing so was yesterday.

But a survey carried out by The Northern Echo on Friday found that only two out of six acute hospital trusts expected to be fully compliant with the working time directive.

The two trusts which said they will be fully compliant were South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust (which includes the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough) and Gateshead Health NHS Trust (which includes the Queen Elizabeth Hospital).

The other four trusts contacted - County Durham and Darlington, Newcastle Hospitals, North Tees and Hartlepool and Sunderland - said they were close to compliance. However, that still technically places them in breach of the laws.

And trusts which do not comply could be open to prosecution. Nationally, as many as one in six hospitals is now breaking the law.

A spokesman for County Durham and Darlington Acute Hospitals NHS Trust (which includes hospitals in Darlington, Durham City and Bishop Auckland) said: "We are 95 per cent compliant with the working time directive and we have plans in place to meet the remaining five per cent."

Officials at North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust said: "We will be 80 per cent compliant by Sunday." And at City Hospitals Sunderland, a spokeswoman said the trust was close to compliance.