Plans for central Newbury GP super surgery

Plans have been drawn up to bring together Northcroft Surgery and St Mary’s Surgery and relocate them at Strawberry Hill House, Old Bath Road.
Lead GP for the project, Dr Anne-Marie Faulkner, said that in order for current and future patients to access 21st century medical care, the plan was to relocate the two practices but to keep them as individual operations.
Health regulator the Care Quality Commission is currently assessing all GP surgeries and it is thought that neither of the current surgeries would pass, given their age and design.
St Mary’s Road currently has floor space of 294sq m and Northcroft Lane has 186sq m.
If it is approved, the new super surgery will be 1,400sq m, with the additional space providing more consulting and treatment rooms.
Dr Faulkner said: “With the new developments coming to Newbury, there’s a need for greater medical service.
“It’s about bringing medicine into the 21st century. Both our buildings are beautiful but old: medicine has changed, with the size of the buildings we are limited to what we can offer. It’s all about increasing patient services.”
She added: “This is an exciting change that everyone is looking forward to – it’s going to be great to see it come to fruition."
However, one patient, who asked not to be named, was concerned about parking.
He said: "Parking is going to be a factor as very little parking is being made available.
“It is unreasonable to expect sick patients to walk a considerable distance from a public car park to access healthcare.”
The chairwoman of the West Berkshire Healthwatch group, Waheeda Soomro, was also concerned about older people who currently lived close to one of the surgeries being forced to travel further.
She questioned whether there had been enough consultation with patients at either of the surgeries and how effective any communication had been.
She added: “The other thing is about choices. What are the other surgeries in the vicinity and can people go into a surgery nearer to them and sign up?”
In response, Dr Faulkner said that the plans had been put on the walls of the surgeries several weeks ago, with patients given the chance to have their say, adding that they were not bound by NHS regulations to have a formal consultation process.
She said compromises had to be made in order to keep both practices in the town centre.
She said: “Unfortunately there are no town centre sites with oodles of car parking so compromises have to be made to take primary care forward. One of these compromises is that the car parking is limited.”