£5.5m to replace health centre (From Oxford Mail)

£5.5m to replace health centre

WORK will start on a major new £5.5m health centre in the heart of Witney next month.

An artist’s impression of the new centre (Courtesy of the project’s architects and planners, GVA)

The new three-storey Windrush Health Centre will be built on the current Welch Way site and will more than treble the size of the old building. It will double the number of GP surgery rooms and create new treatment rooms and a pharmacy at the site, next to Witney Community Hospital.

Work will start on April 11 to build the centre to the back and side of the existing premises, to be kept open during the works.

Practice partner Dr Paul Watson said: “I’m confident that it will be one of the best medical facilities in the area, if not the best.”

The current single-storey building has seven consulting rooms catering for nine doctors, five nurses, and two health care assistants. The new building will have 14 consulting rooms for GPs and two for nurses, three treatment rooms, a minor operations suite and two rooms for taking blood. It will also have a new endoscopy suite — to treat stomach and intestinal problems — and a podiatry service, for feet, ankle, and lower leg problems.

Dr Watson said the new building could cater for 16,000 patients — it currently has over 12,000 — and will have scope to take on more GPs. He said: “The current premises are not really up to the standard that we would like for providing modern health care. They are cramped, they are outdated and they are not fit for purpose. I’m very pleased that the patients of Witney will soon have access to first-class facilities which they have been denied for so many years.”

Practice doctors have campaigned for new facilities since 2002. Dr Watson said plans were put on hold in 2007 because of uncertainty over NHS funding. They have now obtained a mortgage for the site and will get rent from NHS Oxfordshire. GPs are not directly employed by the NHS but work as independent contractors.

Dr Watson said: “We felt it would be better if we owned the building, so we had more say in how it was run and used. The GPs have raised the mortgage themselves, which will then be financed by renting space for health care use.”

Catherine Mountford, NHS Oxfordshire’s director of strategy and quality, said: “We are really pleased to be able to seal the development agreement with the practice.”

Planning permission was given by West Oxfordshire District Council in April last year. The project is due to finish in 12 months.

Cheltenham building firm Beam Construction will carry out the work. Managing director, Steve Ratcliffe, said: “The challenge will be building it around the existing surgery and existing hospital and trying to minimise disruption.”