Shattered hopes for health centre (From Witney Gazette)

Shattered hopes for health centre

9:00am Wednesday 19th July 2006 in Witney

PLANS for a bigger, better building for Witney's largest health centre have been scuppered because of a lack of NHS funding.

GPs and staff at Windrush Health Centre were finally given hope of replacing the cramped, outdated surgery with a new building after getting the go-ahead from health managers to develop its site in Welch Way.

They organised for architects to assess the site and plans were drawn up but have had to postpone work after South West Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust said there was no money available to fund the surgery once it was built. The announcement has come as a bitter disappointment to doctors, nurses and patients who have been campaigning for several years for a new building. Last year, more than 1,000 residents signed a petition calling for a new centre to be built as part of the Marriotts Close development, in Welch Way, after the PCT said land at the surgery's existing site could not be used.

After a series of discussions, the health centre won support from West Oxfordshire District Council, which owns Marriotts, for a surgery to possibly be part of the development.

But senior practice partner Dr Paul Watson said those plans were dropped when the PCT changed its mind and gave the go-ahead for the health centre which has about 12,700 registered patients to use its existing site for a new centre.

He said he wanted to inform people about what had happened because there had been such strong support for a new health centre, and to set straight confusion about why the Marriotts Close planning application submitted at the end of June did not include a health centre.

Dr Watson said: "Unfortuately, because of the dire financial circumstances in the health economy, no surgery developments are currently being supported, even though we are desperately short of space, so we do not know when, or whether, we will be able to begin work on our new building."

The new centre would have had double the floor space of the existing surgery, with more consulting and nurses' rooms. Dr Watson said this would have meant increasing services, as well as improving those already offered.

He said that even if the Marriotts plans included a new health centre, it could not be built because there was no funding to keep it open He said: "The PCT would pay the rent for a centre once built, and we are told that there is no funding for any GP premises, so it doesn't matter where the new centre was being built there would be no financial backing for it thereafter. This is the case across the county."

There is a glimmer of hope that the reorganisation of the county's five PCTs into one trust in October may see funding approved for the development, but Dr Watson said it was looking less and less likely. However, he said the centre would not give up fighting.

"The problem is that there's always passing of the buck. Government sets new targets, but the funding doesn't match. You have the Health Secretary saying 'we need more community hospitals' in the same week that Moorview Hospital is closed. We cannot carry on in the building we are in it is totally inadequate but we don't want to turn patients away," he said.

Witney's 15-bed Moorview Hospital, which treated elderly people with mental health problems, closed last month as part of mental health NHS trust plans to reduce a projected £7.2m gap in its budget.

Ruth Atkins, spokesman for South West and South East Oxfordshire PCT, said before 2004, rent payments for GP surgeries were funded centrally, at no cost to PCTs or local health authorities.

When this changed, PCTs across the Thames Valley were allocated money for existing practices and decided that funding would be prioritised to schemes already under way which did not include the Windrush Health Centre.

She said: "There was no other means of funding these schemes."

The PCT developed a plan to identify existing and future service needs and the Windrush centre was named the "number one priority" of unfunded new health centre developments. However, the PCT merger in October means that a new development plan will be drawn up and there was uncertainty over whether the Windrush would be a priority case, and, therefore, plans could not move forward.

Ms Atkins said although Windrush Health Centre was a number one priority for the South Oxfordshire PCTs, this might not be the case for the new PCT.