Plans approved to build four new GP surgery hubs in Sheffield

The council is working in partnership with the NHS South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board to deliver the new hubs, using £37 million of UK Treasury funding. This is because the NHS board is not allowed to own capital assets such as buildings.

There are currently plans to build four new hubs in Burngreave, Fir Vale, Shiregreen and Parson Cross to replace nine GP practices which run 12 surgeries. A further proposal to build a new GP hub in the city centre has still yet to be finalised and may not go ahead, a special meeting of the city council’s strategy, resources and policy committee heard today (Monday, December 19).

There was also a question mark over proposals to move patients from Melrose Surgery to a new hub at Concord Sports Centre in Shiregreen.

Under plans approved by the committee, Burngreave Surgery and Sheffield Medical Centre would share the Foundry 1 centre in Spital Street, Burngreave, run by the Foundry Primary Care Network, and the Cornerstone Building on Burngreave Road and Herries Road Surgery would close. Page Hall Medical Centre and Upwell Street Surgery would move to Foundry 2 in Rushby Street, Fir Vale.

"Chronic” GP shortage

Firth Park Surgery and Shiregreen Medical Centre would move to the SAPA 1 centre at Concord Sports Centre and Melrose Surgery on Burngreave Road would close. The Health Care Surgery, Buchanan Road Surgery and Margetson Surgery would all move to SAPA 2 on Buchanan Road/Wordsworth Avenue. They will be run by SAPA Primary Care Network.

One of the aims is to help combat the “chronic shortage” of GPs in the city, by providing premises that offer a better way of working, with space to develop other health services on site, including diagnostic services that would usually involve a trip to hospital.

GPs would be leased the premises for 25 years at a peppercorn rent, plus service charges, making it a more attractive proposition than taking on the debt to own surgeries themselves. Council director of integrated commissioning Joe Horobin said: “A number of GP premises are really quite outdated now and too small to deliver medicine in the 21st century.”

LibDem leader Coun Shaffaq Mohammed questioned the SAPA1 move from Burngreave to Concord Sports Centre at Shiregreen, asking: “Isn’t that a long way away?” and said it shoud be linked to the Burngreave surgery. He said that Shiregeen Medical Centre is “around the corner” from Concord and Firth Park Surgery is also close by.

He said: “If I lived near Melrose Road, I’d be absolutely against this. The question is, is that an error on someone’s part, because accepting if their surgery is closing, Burngreave Spital Street might be the place.”

Level of risk

Joe Horobin said: “This is a fairly rapidly-evolving process and, based on feedback from people in that area, the Concord Sport Centre proposal won’t be going ahead.”

Coun Mohammed said he backed the plans because that area has a lower life expectancy than more affluent areas adding: “I want this money to stay in Sheffield – I want the five to be developed.”