PATIENTS are being left stranded at Salisbury Hospital for hours as a private ambulance company fails to hit its targets.

Arriva, the firm that transports patients in Wiltshire, arrived late to around one in five appointments throughout last year and the early part of 2015, against a target of just one in 20.

It aims to arrive at 85 per cent of same-day bookings within four hours.

But these targets were missed eight months out of 12 during 2014/15.

And it should attend pre-booked jobs within an hour, but could only manage this on three in every four appointments, on average.

One patient who was forced to wait four-and-a-half hours for Arriva to take her home from Salisbury Hospital has slated the service and says delays are wasting doctors’ valuable time and damaging patients' health.

When Francesca Marnar visited SDH in a wheelchair, doctors had told her not to sit in it for too long but she had no choice when Arriva failed to show up on time.

Mrs Marnar, who lives in the Woodford Valley, said the wait had damaged her back and made her pressure sores worse.

And she said one member of the transport crew had been "very rude" and shouted at her.

"It’s absolutely disgusting,” she said

“I can’t understand it.”

Mrs Marnar, who uses the service regularly, said it was getting worse.

She was forced to cancel an important appointment at Bath Hospital on Wednesday because Arriva arrived late to pick her up again.

"I had had to wait weeks for it," she said.

"Nobody phoned... nothing. They're absolutely useless."

A spokesman for Wiltshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) declined to comment on the case.

She said: "Any complaint that is received regarding this service is fully investigated by both organisations."

But when asked for a list of complaints about Arriva under the Freedom of Information Act, Wiltshire CCG said it did not hold the information.

Ed Potter, regional boss at Arriva Transport Solutions, said: “I am sorry for the distress that Ms Marnar has experienced using the service.

"We have already been in contact with Ms Marnar to offer an apology for her delay, and I would like to take this opportunity to extend my personal apologies to her.

"The required standard for collecting patients who are booked on the day is for 85 per cent of patients to be collected within four hours.

"While some patients have waited longer than four hours, the majority of patients are collected within that time, and over half are collected within 90 minutes.

"We have faced some challenges but there has been an improvement against our timeliness performance standards since March this year.

"As a business we are committed to meeting the required standards across the region and continue to work closely with NHS colleagues to achieve this.”