Last night’s meeting of Stansted Surgery’s Patient Participation Group provided some insight into the state of play with the long-awaited new medical centre in Lower Street. My last blog post on this topic reported that the local Clinical Commissioning Group had announced that Stansted’s GPs were refusing the sign a lease on the as yet to be built premises. Last night the doctors said that the lease is not yet ready to sign – so in their view there is nothing to refuse to sign – but that they want to clinch the deal as soon as possible.

There can be no doubt that our GPs are desperate to get out of their existing inadequate premises; they are committed to doing all they feel they can do to bring the new medical centre on line. Nevertheless, so many deadlines have been passed that I have stopped publishing what I am told might happen when. I get the impression that the deal at Lower Street is proving legally more complicated than most people thought at the outset. This was always going to be the case, given the complicated nature of a commercial development with multiple tenants.

Constant government interference in the organisation of the NHS has not helped; the issue seems to be knowing who is responsible for what and who can make important commitments for what will be a 21-year commercial agreement. The GPs said they are concerned to ensure that once Stansted gets its new medical centre that the services it delivers are assured for at least the whole 21 years’ period of the lease on the building. It seems that NHS structural uncertainties are making that more difficult to achieve.

Finally, a regular issue arose; car parking. I took away the job of finding out what arrangements the district council will put in place to manage the various sections of Lower Street car park to cater for health, apartment residents, shops and general users once the centre is up and running. You can’t get away from parking problems in Stansted!

I made the point at the meeting that the Stansted Practice should improve the level of communications with Stansted residents about progress with the medical centre. I hope this post helps a little, but information direct from the horse’s mouth should be better at satisfying concerns about a need that has not been satisfied for well over ten years. I know it is now Advent, but I am not the best of Prophets on this Coming!