Old Oak Surgery

Went on the web first thing to look at the results of the Canadian General Election. Good news for Labour’s Canadian sister party the New Democratic Party (http://www.ndp.ca/page/3450) who went up from 18 to 29 seats, and can be key players in the new hung parliament. Sadly a great campaigner, NDP candidate Marilyn Churley, narrowly missed gaining a Toronto area seat - if you want to hear the best song ever written about a local politician, check out ‘The Signature of Marilyn Churley’ (inspired by her time as a regulatory committee chair in Ontario) at http://www.swinghammer.com/sue/sue-sounds.html

Unfortunately for an Acton parochialist like me, none of the three Canadian towns called Acton elected an NDP member. Acton Ontario and Acton New Brunswick re-elected Conservatives, whilst Acton Quebec stayed with the separatist Bloc Quebecois (the constituency is 96% French speaking). I’m hoping to visit the major American and Canadian Actons this summer or next.

I received an email this afternoon from Julia Hunt of the Bromyard Avenue Residents Association about the future of the Old Oak Surgery. This is a GPs surgery which is in Hammersmith and Fulham but has a number of patients from East Acton. They had advertised proposals to build a replacement surgery on a vacant site in Armstrong Road, but this is now advertised for sale, and patients have been told that the surgery is moving to White City.

I emailed Julia back to confirm that the surgery and hence its patients (wherever they live) are the responsibility of Hammersmith and Fulham PCT. Therefore all I know in my Ealing PCT role is second hand. I understand that the EPCT asked H&FPCT at the time we heard about the proposed move whether this meant that they proposed to transfer the surgery and patient list to us, and was told not.

Their decision to move the surgery is not unique to Old Oak (indeed I should declare a personal interest as my GP's surgery in East Acton is also likely to be affected as it comes under H&FPCT's remit.) Hammersmith and Fulham PCT have decided to move over time their W12 practices to a new state of art health centre in the White City development. This is amongst the first developments in London of a new approach to primary care, and will include I understand a wider range of out-of-hospital services than ever before including a breadth of specialists and day surgery capacity. You can make comments about these issues to Hammersmith and Fulham PCT via the relevant section of their website which is http://www.hf-pct.nhs.uk/getinvolved/index.htm

It's a more radical approach than we at EPCT are undertaking, and in Acton in particular I'm not convinced that the White City model would be appropriate given the geographical distribution of communities. That said, we are looking at options for major improvements to Acton Health Centre to provide some of the sort of extra facilities that White City will provide.


The building of the new Cloister Road surgery for Dr Robinska next to the Gunnersbury Day
Hospital (this photo was taken last year - it's now virtually finished)

Locally at Ealing PCT we’re investing in nearby replacements of overcrowded surgeries, rather than general centralisation. The first example is the new and expanded North Acton surgery opening next month in Cloister Road in East Acton ward (see 23rd September post).

On in the evening to the Performance and Audit Panel of the Council. The principal issues we discussed were ICT procurement, delivery of the audit plan, counter-fraud work, and means of income collection in the Springbridge and Herbert Road car parks. I stressed the importance of increased anti-fraud action and publicity against the increasing evident levels of bogus accident claims against Councils. Nevertheless, what you could politely call an important but unexciting meeting.