Sitting in the Grosvenor House Surgery in West Ealing yesterday morning I was struck by just how busy it was. I’m not there all that often but often enough to know this was a very busy morning. Yes, maybe a Monday morning is always busy, but it felt more than that. The surgery was packed with people of all ages and more kept coming in and we had to shuffle round for new arivals to find anywhere to sit. If it’s as busy as this now what will it be like in a few years time when the Green Man Lane Estate development is complete and the population on it has increased from around 800 to some 2,000? Grosvenor House is the nearest surgery so surely most residents will look to register with it?
I looked up the 95-page document on the Green Man Lane Estate development that went to the planning committee on 1st September 2010 and it had this to say about healthcare provision:
- Education and Health There are currently 41 GPs working within 800m of the Site and it has been confirmed that all are registering new patients. The development scheme will introduce 242 new households (approximately 1,250+ people) with a mix of age groups, which will require a range of medical facilities. The PCT’s preference for addressing the impacts of the development is to secure a monetary contribution for improved equipment/ facilities; and consequently the applicant has agreed to a clause within the S106 agreement contributing towards the borough’s health facilities.
Further on I found this:
a) A contribution of £190,000 by the developer towards the improvement of healthcare provision in the local area;
So, if I’ve got it right, the developers pay £190,00 to the Primary Care Trust to address the impact on primary healthcare of some 1200 new residents. Since then, of course, PCT’s are soon to be abolished and replaced by the Clinical Commissioning Groups – in our case, a group of Ealing GPs will be responsible for designing and provisioning local health and care services (more details on this here).
Residents will soon start moving in to Phase 1 of the development and the whole development will take about 8 years to complete. That sounds like there’s lots of time but in a few years there will probably be hundreds of new residents already living there and needing a GP. So it feels like planning needs to be underway now to increase the number of GPs and other healthcare services. My next step is going to be to contact the Ealing Clinical Commissioning Group to find out what’s happening with the planning. I’ll post my findings as soon as I hear back.
Just to say that it’s one month since I sent my letter to Ealing Clinical Commissioning Group and not a peep, not even an acknowledgement of receiveing my letter. Not exactly great communication.
I’ve now had a reply. In fairness, Dr Parmar did apologise for the delay in replying as more information was needed – probably on the exact terrms and timing of the £190,000. The ECCG plans to talk to local GPs and agree with them how the money will be spent. They need further clarification on when the money will be made available. In addition, as part of delivering their Out of Hospital strategy they are developing a detailed estates strategy which will support more people in the community and the W13 area will be included in this work. They plan to complete this work this year. So, we’ll come back to this question in around 12 months to see what progress has been made.