“GP branch” becomes house
A 'satellite surgery' will revert back to being a bungalow after more than 30 years’ ownership by a GP practice after council planners approved a change-of-use bid.
Shawbury Medical Practice, in Shrewsbury, previously sent a doctor to the property it owns in High Ercall, on Tuesday and Friday afternoons, but senior practice partner Alistair Clark’s proposal to change it back to residential use has been approved by Telford and Wrekin Council.
In his application letter, he wrote that the site was “becoming an unsafe environment to practice modern medicine” and a “waste of CCG resources”. Last year he told Ercall Magna Parish Council it was “very basic – like a desk in a village hall, basically”.
He told councillors 168 consultations with 88 individual patients had taken place at the High Ercall satellite branch in the first half of 2019.
Of those patients, 57 had also attended the Shawbury site, so Dr Clark argued the branch was no longer fulfilling its function of reaching patients who were unable to travel.
He added that the practice was seeing twice as many patients as 10 or 15 years ago and the Shawbury surgery was often so busy doctors could not go to High Ercall. He said home visits and medicine deliveries would continue.
Shropshire NHS Clinical Commissioning Group’s Primary Care Commissioning Committee agreed to the closure when it met last October.
In his application letter, Dr Clark wrote that the property was bought by the practice more than 30 years ago.
“One bedroom was used as a consulting room for two hours a week as a drop-in surgery for frail patients with no means of getting to our main surgery,” he wrote.
“It was, to all intents and purposes, a bungalow used for two hours a week.”
Dr Clark wrote that the house, on the corner of Talbot Fields and Shirlowe Lane, High Ercall, had never been converted and was in-keeping with the design of its neighbours.
