Communities, Housing and Environment Committee

12/11/19

 

 

Member Agenda Item Request – GP Surgery Provision

 

Introduction:

From Councillors Purle and D Rose:

You will be all too aware that Maidstone (and the West Kent Clinical Commissioning Group’s area) suffers one of the worst ratios of patients-to-doctors in the country.  This appears to apply largely across the board but (a) I am concerned about my patch given the loss 18 months ago of the Allington Park surgery and the prospect of about a million more flats getting built in my Ward or very close to it; and (b) Cllr D Rose is particularly concerned about the poor GP provision in Park Wood, a point aggravated by his residents being on the worse-end of local health inequalities and by monies supposedly having been collected from property developers to address this.

Desired Outcome:

We would like the committee to request & receive a report at its meeting on 10th December 2019 on the subject with particular attention given to two areas as follows:-

Firstly, we understand that conversations have been happening at a high level between the Council’s Officers and the Clinical Commissioning Group (“CCG”) about GP provision throughout the Borough.  We would like an account of these discussions (when they’ve occurred, frequency, broadly what was said by whom, any commitments or undertakings made or received) with an explanation of particular obstacles the Council may have encountered.  Whilst we have a particular interest in our own respective Wards, our interest is Borough-wide and we would particularly like to know of such discussions where they concern any developments in which MBC intends to act as master-developer e.g. Lenham Heath, Maidstone East et cetera.

Secondly, we would like a broad summary & explanation of options that are, even if in theory, open to MBC to accelerate GP surgery provision should it wish to take a more interventionist approach e.g. building & providing surgeries itself.