Healthwatch, which was instrumental in saving Daventry's Danetre Hospital in the early 1990s, could be reformed following concerns raised by people about a new 0844 phone number at Danetre Medical Practice.

The practice switched from an 01327 number to the 0844 one this month, allowing patients to call at any time of the day to book, check or cancel appointments.

Calls are charged at 5p per minute from a BT landline, but some are concerned this is another NHS service they are being required to pay for.

Daventry resident John Birch was heavily involved in the original Healthwatch campaign and he is considering starting it up again. He said: "I don't believe the disadvantaged or elderly should be expected or required to pay inflated prices to fund a system that should be well enough funded from the NHS.

"Calling the new number from a mobile for three minutes could cost £1.20, and many people on lower incomes only have mobile phones rather than landlines.

"The new technology is most helpful, but why should it be funded by patients?

"I've had people call me, or stop me in the street about this, but people don't want their names being known because they're frightened of being de-listed by their GP.

"That in the modern age, people are frightened of speaking out – it's awful really."

Now Mr Birch is considering reforming Healthwatch to give people an independent forum to put their views across in the hope that it could challenge the issue over the phone number, but also provide a local, Daventry-focused liaison between Northamptonshire Teaching Primary Care Trust (PCT), which is in charge of GP services, Danetre Hospital and other health services.

Ruth Farthing, manager of Danetre Medical Practice, said: "We found that patients had problems getting through on the telephone to book appointments.

"To address this issue we decided to lease an automated telephone appointment book system that can take four callers simultaneously.

"The new system is expensive to lease and so we have changed our main telephone number to help subsidise the cost. We can assure patients that all revenue raised by the new number is to off-set the cost of this new service."

The Department of Health sent a letter to all PCTs at the start of March saying it was fact-finding about the use of 0844 numbers.

The PCT said other surgeries have been instructed not to sign up to 0844 numbers and that it is expecting more information from the East Midlands Strategic Health Authority soon.