Cash announcement for local surgeries to expand

SIXTEEN doctors’ surgeries in Somerset will be able to expand and provide more appointments to local patients following a cash injection from central government.

- DANIEL MUMBY

The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) announced on Tuesday morning (May 6) that it would be sharing more than £102m across more than 1,000 GP practices across the UK, allowing the practices to expand.

This bricks and mortar investment will help the NHS to deliver an extra 8.3 million appointments each year, improving the service being offered to patients as part of Labour's ten-year plan to future-proof and modernise the health service.

The NHS Somerset integrated care board (ICB) has succeeded in securing funding to expand 16 of the surgeries within its catchment area with more details about the timing of individual projects expected to be made public in the coming weeks.

Health secretary Wes Streeting MP said this represented the biggest investment in GP facilities in five years, and formed part of the government's wider £26bn investment in the NHS in a bid to get patients out of acute hospitals and into their local communities.

He said: “It will be a long road, but this government is putting in the work to fix our NHS and make it fit for the future.

“These are simple fixes for our GP surgeries but for too long they were left to ruin, allowing waiting lists to build and stopping doctors treating more patients.

“It is only because of the necessary decisions we took in the budget that we are able to invest in GP surgeries, start tackling the 8am scramble and deliver better services for patients.