crich area community news
New medical centre update
July 2009
You will all be aware that the new surgery premises build has been delayed. Like you, we at Crich Medical Practice are very disappointed. It appears that the main reason was concern by Derbyshire County PCT about the cost of the project when the full plans were considered by the finance department. Undoubtedly and, perhaps expectedly the current financial climate has had a big impact on the project. We have been asked to scale down the premises although this caused us initial concern. However after a recent meeting with the developers, we have arrived at a compromise that we are confident will still allow the majority of our aspirations for the new premises to be achieved. Essentially some of the rooms have been scaled down in size but in fairness some of the original room sizes were in excess of necessity and will still be a vast improvement to the existing premises. One consulting room has been sacrificed but there will still be enough to meet our needs for the present and future. The main change has been to scale down the planned operation suite as this was the most costly aspect of the project. Derbyshire County PCT had serious concerns that it would be disproportionate to the size and needs of the practice and would therefore be underused. In fairness we had intended to offer services to other practices in order to justify the capital and running costs but it now seems that this would be unlikely to come to fruition.
Having agreed the basis for revised plans, these will now be drawn up and be resubmitted to planning with a view to starting the new build in Spring 2010. Given the seriousness of the current economic climate and the prospect of widespread national services budget cuts, we are confident that we have achieved a fair settlement with Derbyshire County PCT that will still provide new premises for Crich of the like that in the past could only have been dreamed of.