Patients in inner-city Brad-ford are the least satisfied in the country with their GPs, according to a new report.

Bradford City Teaching Primary Care Trust ranked bottom of a national league table of patients' experience across England. The ratings were calculated by health information agency Dr Foster from responses to questions posed in the 2004 survey of primary care by the Healthcare Commission, which carries out national surveys of the health services.

Patients were quizzed on subjects such as how long they had to wait for a GP appointment, courtesy of receptionists at GP practices and their treatment.

Bradford City was in the lowest 20 per cent of PCTs in the country for most of the categories including patients' experiences of seeing a doctor and making an appointment. It did, however, gain a good rating for quality of clinical care.

Bradford City Teaching Pri-mary Care Trust (tPCT) chief executive Lynnette Throp said: "The results are a snapshot of a small minority of people's experiences of primary care services which do not reflect the many improvements happening across the city. We have raised concerns about the methodology of this survey which was completed by approximately 300 patients and printed only in English, which does not take into account the language needs of our South Asian patients."

The survey aimed to quiz 850 patients in each PCT. Of the 259 patients who responded in Bradford City - a 31 per cent response rate - 44 per cent were white and 44 per cent Asian or British Asian.

Miss Throp said: "Patient feedback is important and we use it to help us continually improve the services. We are committed to improving services, but this takes time.

"Over the next three years patients will see improvements in healthcare premises as more than £16 million is invested in building new health centres to provide a greater range of services in community settings.

"We have a nationally acclaimed recruitment and retention scheme encouraging more GPs to work in the city centre, and the tPCT is involving more patients than ever in developing services."

Overall Bradford City tPCT was rated 'good' on clinical quality but 'weak' for the patient experience and equity.

GPs' leader Dr John Givans, secretary of Bradford and Airedale Local Medical Committee, said: "Bradford City is deprived and under-funded which means not all their premises are as we would like, but the PCT is working very hard to put that right. The practitioners in City work very hard to try to supply the sort of service that patients want."

In the patient satisfaction survey, North Bradford and Airedale PCTs scored above average, with Bradford South and West PCT scoring just below the average rating.