The issue of the future of doctors’ surgeries throughout the land is still ongoing. Despite health secretary Alan Johnson claiming to parliament that “There is no national policy for replacing traditional GP surgeries with health centres or, indeed, polyclinics […] we are not specifying polyclinics as any part of the exercise” subsequent pronoucements from other ministers have made it clear that this is not true. Health minister Ben Bradshaw has confirmed that “every PCT in the country will be procuring a new […] health centre during 2008-09”.

Despite this we are apparently relatively protected at present in the Cambridge area because the price of land is so high that our PCT cannot afford to build a polyclinic here although they have been looking at building one in St Neots. This has temporarily been shelved because the PCT sub-committee which approves all new projects has decided there is no compelling health reason to build one.

So it looks like the battle on this goes on.

The Guardian recently published a good article on the issue from George Monbiot which will tell you a little more about what’s going on.

Meanwhile Milton Surgery are dealing with the cut in day-time funding as best they can but the emerging details of the national funding of routine surgeries at evenings and weekends seems to suggest that they would not be able to
provide the service the Government requires for the funding they are offering.