Werrington Health Centre in Peterborough set to close
Services are set to be consolidated with the nearby Werrington Surgery on Church Street.
The Partners of BMC Paston group have announced their intention to close Werrington Health Centre.
The centre, which is currently at the Werrington Health Centre, on Skaters Way, is set to close in early March 2025, when its current contract comes out.
At this time, the group plans to transfer all patients and services over to the existing Werrington Surgery on Church Street.
The site was purpose-built to accommodate 10,000 patients and is understood to be operating some way under capacity at the moment.
The application to the close the health centre will be submitted to the NHS Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Integrated Care Board by the end of November.
A statement from the group said: “Since forming a new partnership in October 2023, the GP partners have considered how we can best provide you with the General Practice services you need.
"As a result of this work, we have made the decision to seek to consolidate the Werrington Health Centre and Werrington Surgery sites.
"This will allow us to merge our patient list and enable patients currently with Werrington Health Centre, Skaters Way, to be seen at Werrington Surgery, Church Street.
"The Skaters Way site has no room for expansion, and we are not aware of any planned development or investment by the landlord to update the premises.
"Unfortunately we are unable to influence this decision. Our Church Street Practice is a new, purpose-built facility with empty consulting rooms waiting to be used. This will allow us to offer a wider number of services and improve access to appointments. Our Practice at Church Street in Werrington also has excellent parking and disabled access.
"BMC Paston group can confirm that this will not have a detrimental effect on clinical capacity. It is our expectation that it may increase capacity.
"It will also simplify many internal structures which will offer some benefits to patients with respect to improved response to clinical administration and digital requests. An immediate benefit of this process is that we have recruited an additional GP following an advert on NHS Jobs.
"It is our expectation that we can attract good quality staff following this agreement and that in doing so we will improve continuity of care for patients.
"Staff will also be able to answer calls from all locations. Therefore, we will have a greater number of staff answering the phones for all sites. Over the last 30 days we have answered over 12,585 calls with an average call waiting time of just over 8 minutes to be answered.
“With the consolidation of sites we will be able to ensure more staff are available to take calls at our peak times. We are continuously working to improve our patients’ experience, whilst accessing the practice and bookings appointments.”
Patients have been asked invited to share their views on the ‘Have your say’ page on the centre’s website.