Health chiefs could be set to alter a controversial ban on carers travelling with patients to and from hospital appointments.

Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has met with a barrage of opposition since it stopped carers and family from escorting patients to appointments at Bradford Royal Infirmary and St Luke's Hospital on its Patient Transport Service last December.

But at a recent meeting of a new Patient Transport Forum set up by the Trust to look at patient transport issues, health bosses discussed the possibility of making some exceptions to the ban.

A spokesman for the Trust said: "The first meeting of the patient transport forum was very positive. A wide range of transport issues were discussed, including the matter of escorts in (non-emergency) patient transport ambulances.

"It was agreed the forum would establish a new transport policy, which will address all patient transport issues. The forum consists of patient and public representation, a cross section of Trust departments, WYMAS and local primary care trusts, who will all have input into the shape of the new transport policy.

"Further consultation is now needed and a meeting will be held soon to take forward the shape of this new policy."

Colin Sloane, chairman of the Bradford Teaching Hospitals Patient and Public Involvement Forum and who is also on the Patient Transport Forum, said: "It's a step in the right direction and it's positive that we have this group going. The difficulty is how we define 'exceptional cases.' I think people with mental health problems and dementia, who could be really disorientated travelling in an ambulance on their own, and people with learning difficulties need someone with them."

Wheelchair-bound war veteran Fred Rushworth has not been allowed to take his wife and full-time carer Phyllis to hospital appointments since the ban came into force. The 89-year-old retired textile worker, who suffers from arthritis, hearing problems and has no hip joint in his right leg, uses the service to take him to and from his home in Brackendale Drive, Thackley.

His wife Phyllis, 82, said: "He dreads having to go to the hospital. He has to push himself when he gets to the hospital and he can't push the toilet doors open by himself. I think that particularly elderly people should have someone in the ambulance with them.

"The ambulance drivers are very good at helping him in the house but when he gets to hospital he has no-one to help him."

Several hundred people have signed a petition, organised by Bradford North Area Committee, calling for the policy to be reversed. Committee chairman Councillor David Ward said: "I am not bothered if the Trust has a patient transport group or not. Everyone outside the Trust recognises the service is being discriminatory."