Community Medical Centre

This paper summarises the intention of the Doctors from the School Lane Surgery, Upton upon Severn for discussion at the Forum to be held on Tuesday 3 July 2001 in Upton upon Severn.

The Forum will be informal but, in essence, will consist of an introduction by the Doctors, an explanation of the proposals by the architect, Gould Singleton Partnership, to be followed by a Question and Answer session.

It is the Doctors' intent, following the Forum, to make an Outline Planning Application for the development to the Malvern Hills District Council.

School Lane Surgery was originally established by Dr Bird in 1876. Since then it has developed to meet the needs of the growing community and moved to purpose-built premises in School Lane in 1967.

Over the years, the Doctors' Practice has worked with other medical organisations and now has close links with the NHS Trust, the Optician and the Dentist.

As the services provided by the Doctors has grown, the purpose-built premises became inadequate and, several years ago, an additional property was purchased to accommodate other clinical facilities.

In an attempt to deal with an ever-widening range of services the purpose-built surgery has been altered and extended, but now the facilities are inadequate.

In essence, medical facilities in Upton suffer from the following problems: -
1) The accommodation is simply too small.
2) There is insufficient car parking.
3) Services are spread over several sites, particularly the two sites run by the Doctors and the sites run by the Trust for the District Nurses.
4) There are no facilities for expansion to cater for the growing needs of Upton upon Severn.

The Doctors encourage an integrated approach to healthcare, with care directed to the whole person and the whole community. To provide this sort of care requires the merging of health services and close co-operation and communications.

To this end, the Doctors feel that the proper way to provide this care for the community of Upton upon Severn is to build a new Community Medical Centre on what is a green field site.

Local residents will know that it is difficult to find a site of any significant size within Upton upon Severn that is not affected by flooding. Land at Holly Green / Ryall might be available but is cut off from the centre of Upton at times of severe flooding, making such an option impossible.

The settlement of Tunnel Hill might be able to offer a site, but is predominantly residential and, unless on the main road, is not likely to be on a bus route.

Although the centre of Upton itself has been considered, there are no suitable sites.

A site, however, has been identified fronting to Tunnel Hill where the old road meets Tunnel Hill itself, some 500 metres or so from Upton Town Centre. This site is, in principle, available and the bulk of it is outside the flood plain. It is close to main services and on all the public transport routes that serve Upton. It can be developed in such a way that it will not be affected by future flooding.

The Doctors envisage a Community Medical Centre covering the general practice surgery needs, the NHS Trust District Nurses' services, Dental services, Optical services and community facilities such as an Emergency Room and Social Services' facilities.

The project would be funded through Government rental schemes and it is hoped that, subject to the granting of Outline Planning Permission, construction work could be carried out starting in 2002 with completion of the building in 2003.

RCS

2 July 2001