PCT hopes to end Warrens row with new application for Thingwall surgery

Nov 19 2008 by Matt Hurst, Heswall News

Warrens proposals

WIRRAL Primary Care Trust will submit a planning application in January to transform an area of Green Belt in Thingwall into a surgery servicing 33,000 patients.

In a move the PCT hopes will end years of wrangling, the organisation has switched its attention to the other half of the Warrens site, after failing to convince councillors of “very special circumstances” last November.

The new site is currently occupied by glasshouses, having formally functioned as a demonstration garden, but remains Green Belt and, as such, is likely to face similar opposition to previous efforts.

On Thursday, West Wirral Group Practice, Patient Focus Group representative David Bollans and Kathy Doran, chief executive of Wirral PCT, came together to announce the new plans.

Kathy Doran said: “It’s a different site, it’s glasshouse and shrubland and isn’t a garden.

“It doesn’t have footpaths and dog walkers and the other things people objected to on the garden side.”

The organisations behind the scheme have also produced a glossy booklet outlining their new hopes, as well as details of a consultation process which will run alongside the new application.

Kathy Doran said: “We will submit the planning application in January, and we’re working hard on that.

“The results from the consultation will be available before the planning application is heard, which is likely to be late March or April.”

WWGP doctor Alan Johnston, currently based at Thingwall Surgery, was keen to stress the development would be neither polyclinic nor super-surgery, but an “ordinary GP practice, in quite a good position to compete against these”.

He said WWGP, currently based in converted houses, had used the prospect of a new development to ensure recently qualified doctors would not be put off joining.

Wirral Council’s Scrutiny Committee last Wednesday voted to back cabinet’s decision to release the land, with three Conservative councillors opposed, but two Labour and two Liberal Democrat councillors in favour.