A WOKINGHAM surgery is set to remain open with a GP service despite residents’ fears over its future.
Last month, a petition gathered more that 200 signatures to stop the surgery from closing. It was created by Cllr Daniel Hinton, Conservative town councillor for Evendons West.
Since Thursday, January 6, Burma Hills Surgery on Ashridge Road has been a vaccination centre, after Dr Ishac Jalisi retired.
Patients were being seen for appointments at Wokingham Medical Centre in Rose Street.
Speaking to Wokingham Today, Cllr Charles Margetts, executive member for health at Wokingham Borough Council, confirmed that GP services are scheduled to resume.
“We have had a commitment from Berkshire West Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Wokingham Medical Centre (WMC) that the surgery will reopen, with a GP, from the end of March,” he said.
Cllr Rachel Burgess, Labour ward councillor, is grateful there is a commitment to get a GP in place and said that the concern was understandable given there is “not enough GP’s to go around”.
“Burma Hills surgery is in the heart of my ward and many of my residents rely upon it so I am glad the commitment has been made to restart GP services,” she said.
“The Royal College of GP’s itself states there is a ‘chronic shortage of GPs caused by a decade of under-investment in the family doctor service by successive governments’,” she added.
The surgery currently has around 2,000 patients on its books, and residents were concerned the WMC did not have the capacity to accommodate them.
Cllr Margetts believes the disruption could have been avoided if clearer communication was provided to those registered at Burma Hills.
“Communication of this issue has been poor and it must be improved to avoid this happening again,” he said. “Berkshire West CCG has to be more proactive in providing better communication for residents and the council will be watching carefully to ensure problems like this don’t arise again.”
Cllr Burgess believes that the council can do more to encourage GPs to come to the area to avoid this pause in services arising elsewhere in the area.
“Although the council doesn’t commission GP services, it should be taking positive action to attract GP’s to Wokingham,” she said.
“We should be incentivising GPs to come to our area, for example by working with the CCG to develop relocation packages or other incentives like attractive housing options.
“The council needs to be examining what it can do, rather than explaining what it cannot do.”
Cllr Hinton said that he is going to keep his petition live.
“I’m not ending it until I see a GP in there,” he said. “I feel like we need to keep pushing it.”
