If you can phone up to book an appointment, surely you can phone up to cancel one?

The Daily Echo's campaign Turn Up Or Tell 'Em aims to get people communicating properly with their doctors' surgeries - whose already-stretched resources are being pushed to the limits by no-show patients.

Through the campaign the Daily Echo has revealed that over 6,300 appointments are missed each month in Southampton alone, with one surgery losing a precious 2205 minutes to unattended appointments in December alone.

Dr Martin Hughes, GP at Weston Lane and Harefield Surgeries said: "We are here to care for our community, and we want to be available to our patients when they need us.

"We appreciate how frustrating it can be for our patients when they are unable to book a routine appointment with their usual doctor or a nurse.

"Every week, we lose on average 70 appointments, because patients don’t attend and have not cancelled.

"It’s also not uncommon for a patient to request an urgent appointment for that day and then to not attend.

"All these appointments could have been made available to other people in our care.

"At this practice we have created for our patients multiple ways in which an appointment can be cancelled; text message, email, online via our website, calling or by popping in.

"And now patients can also cancel their appointment via an app on their smartphone.

"Of course we would appreciate, as would other patients, as much notice as possible. It’s ok to cancel."