PATIENT Ken Crisp is refusing to call his GP surgery after it changed its telephone number to a national call rate number.

Mr Crisp, who is retired and lives in Longleys Close, Devizes, said he was appalled by the introduction of the 0870 number at St James' Surgery in Gains Lane, Devizes.

The surgery introduced the number when it got a new telephone system after its existing system broke down.

The telephone system provider NEG takes a percentage of the cost of telephone calls to and from the surgery.

Mr Crisp said: "By changing to an 0870 number the surgery is imposing unfair expense on a lot of their patients. I refuse to use the 0870 number and I either go in person to the surgery or write them a letter.

"I have written to the surgery to complain and they have tried to justify it by saying that they are getting a free telephone installation, but it means their patients are probably paying for it. I think it is a cheek for the surgery to charge the patients to put in this telephone system."

Mr Crisp claimed many people were unaware of the cost of calling an 0870 number.

"The proliferation of these 0870 numbers is enormous and many firms and organisations are using them to increase their own or some third party's income at the expense of the callers," he said.

St James is the second GP surgery in Devizes to change its telephone number to an 0870 number.

Last October Southbroom Surgery changed to an 0870 number. It also has a new telephone system provided by NEG.

Calling an 0870 number can cost double that of a local call during the daytime.

Joss Green Armytage, practice manager at St James' Surgery, said the new telephone system is costing the surgery money.

She said: "We pay a service charge every month to NEC who own the telephone system. We are absorbing a phenomenal amount of the cost. For the extra pence that it might be costing patients in ringing the surgery in the scale of things it's microscopic."

She said of the 5,600 patients that the surgery has she had received two written complaints. "Lots of people saying how nice the new system is," she said.

She added: "We went to NEG because they could offer us a better system than we already had and which had collapsed.

"One of the biggest problems we had with our old system was people would constantly get the engaged tone and have to ring back.

"From the patients I have spoken to it seems they are getting through to us much quicker.

"We want the best service for our patients so they can get through to the right practitioner at the right time and as quickly as possible.

"The cost of the surgery's telephone bills has increased by a third over the last three years. More than 60 per cent of the calls the surgery makes is to mobile phones which costs considerably more than to a landline."