FRAIL patients are being left upset because of changes to the main bus service for Wharfedale Hospital.

Since the end of August the 965 First service has stopped taking passengers up to the Otley facility between 10am and 4pm on weekdays.

Instead, patients are being dropped off at a stop near the end of the hospital’s long driveway.

A meeting with passengers this week heard that some people with mobility problems were being forced to either pay for a taxi, endure a painful walk, or miss their appointment altogether as a result.

Councillor James Lewis (Lab, Kippax & Methley), chairman of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s transport committee, was also told the change could reduce the amount of local treatment that could be offered to cancer patients.

Resident and hospital patient Anita Howard told him: “It’s a long way from the stop to the hospital for somebody with walking difficulties.

“The Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust had not been notified in any way about these changes and their impact on what the trust can offer.

“I’ve just been through cancer treatment and was desperate to have as much treatment as I could have in Otley. But if the trust know people can’t get there, they’re not going to offer Otley as a choice.”

Mrs Howard also compared First’s action, which the company says has been adopted to make the service run more efficiently, to “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut”.

And she told Tuesday’s meeting that she had seen at first hand how upsetting the impact could be.

Just that morning she had seen a woman on the bus ask the driver if it went up to the hospital, to be told it now stopped on Newall Carr Road.

She said: “She explained that she didn’t walk very well and that if she waited for the other bus that does go in to the hospital she would miss her appointment, so she would have to book a taxi.

“She was really quite upset, and ended up coming back onto the bus saying she’d have to try to walk as she didn’t have enough money for a taxi.”

Mrs Howard’s husband, Philip - recently retired after working as a porter at Wharfedale Hospital for 25 years - added: “Ninety five per cent of the appointments at the hospital are between 9am and 5pm, which roughly coincides with the times they’ve stopped the bus from serving it.”

Otley Town Council leader Councillor John Eveleigh (Lab, Ashfield), who arranged the meeting, said: “The town council passed a resolution, unanimously, criticising First for this decision.

“That is with First now and, while we have had a ‘holding’ letter back, we are expecting them to reply.

“Hopefully James can take some of these issues that you have raised back and work on them because we obviously do need a service going back into the hospital grounds as soon as possible.”

Coun Lewis said there were a number of options he would be asking First to consider which would make efficiency gains and so allow them to restore the 965 service to how it was.

Those included using a smaller, dedicated bus - rather than the current double decker - and installing technology so that the buses could communicate with traffic lights in town, and keep them on green where appropriate.