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00:00Greetings once again, people of Somerset. It is Daniel Mumby, your local democracy reporter,
00:08here for another weekend live stream, and you join me today on the B3153 Somerton Road on the
00:15outskirts of Langport. I say Langport, we're technically in the neighbouring village and
00:19parish of Hewish Episcopi. I know a lot of my old Langport contacts will get very cross if I don't
00:25differentiate between the two, and the reason we are here today is we are talking about Langport's
00:31doctor's surgery, which lies a short walk in that direction. We are currently standing just off the
00:37main road leading to Somerton at the site of a hundred planned new homes. Planning permission
00:43was given by Somerset Council to Langport LVALLP, that's a land promoter based not too far from
00:50here. They were granted permission back in December 2023, so not last Christmas but the
00:55one before, to build up to a hundred new homes on this site on the northern side of Somerton Road.
01:02You can see relatively recent housing developments sneaking behind the back of old Kelways, which
01:07we'll be passing in a minute, and as part of that planning permission the developer has agreed to
01:13provide a certain amount of funding to expanding Langport surgery, which like I say lies on the
01:19A378 on North Street, a short walk in that direction. So what we're going to do now,
01:25bearing in mind I might have to shout over the traffic, is we're going to take a leisurely stroll
01:30along the existing pavements into the town centre, showing the route that residents of these new
01:36homes will have to take to get to their doctor's appointments and pick up prescriptions and all
01:40the rest of it, but also to put the surgery into the context of other housing developments that
01:47are happening in and around the town, and talking about how soon the surgery expansion could see the
01:54light of day. If you want to drop in any comments or questions, leave them in the comment section.
02:00I'm particularly keen to hear from anyone who lives in Langport, Hewish Episcopal or any of
02:05the surrounding villages, because this area does serve a very large catchment, and one of the
02:10reasons that it is being targeted for expansion is because it has such a large patient list. It
02:16is oversubscribed. We all know how difficult it can be to get a doctor's appointment these days,
02:21even in an area where new surgeries have recently been delivered. We're just going to cross over
02:26Weir Lane. We are going to stick to the pavements and use the existing crossings as much as possible
02:31to make this a realistic re-enactment of a new resident's trip as we possibly can.
02:38One of the things that's interesting about Langport is that as a parish and as a town,
02:43it's very hemmed in. A lot of the land around here is very low-lying. We are right in the middle
02:48of the levels and moors, so it's very hard to actually build in the town, and therefore the
02:54parish of Hewish Episcopal, which surrounds the town like a doughnut, has taken the bulk of the
02:59new housing. We're passing by one of the recently completed estates, the Parrot Gardens estate,
03:06delivered, I believe, by Persimmon, of around 80 homes, and that stretches all the way down
03:12the A372 towards the local secondary school, Hewish Episcopal Academy. One of the big trade-offs
03:19between Langport and Hewish Episcopal is how much of the contributions from new housing development
03:25stay in the village rather than going to the services in the town. It's been a source of
03:31constant tension for as long as I've known the area, and one of my first jobs as a journalist
03:37was covering Somerton, Langport, and the surrounding villages, so I've been exposed
03:41to that tension many times. So when we're talking about new doctor surgeries or expanding existing
03:48ones, let me give you a bit of background as to how exactly it works. If you've got a major new
03:54development, say you're building 2,000 homes in the middle of a green field, there will be
04:00assessments undertaken for the number of new people who'll be living there, the amount of
04:06patients on the lists of existing doctor surgeries, and there'll be negotiations going on as to whether
04:12land needs to be set aside within that development site for a new medical centre, and then the money
04:20and the site is set aside by the developer. That money is then passed on to the NHS Somerset
04:27Integrated Care Board, which brings together all the different hospital trusts, all the different
04:34organisations that run the doctor surgeries, like Symphony Healthcare in this part of South Somerset,
04:39which runs a lot of doctor surgeries in Yeovil and the neighbouring villages,
04:43and they will discuss the best way to deliver a doctor's surgery. The alternative way to do it,
04:49if you have a surgery that is already in place and up and running but is struggling to cope,
04:56is allocating money through a section 106 agreement where NHS Somerset's ICB, which
05:03replaced the clinical commissioning groups a few years ago, they have a calculation based on the
05:09number of people and the amount of money per person that would be needed for a given facility,
05:15and then they will come up with a figure for the developer saying, give us this much money
05:19by a certain date, usually by the time a certain number of homes have been delivered,
05:24and then that money is held in trust by the ICB, along with pots of money from other housing
05:30estates in the area, until they have a scheme agreed with the doctor's surgery themselves,
05:36and then it's a case of getting planning permission and implementing that. One thing
05:41that we should say is that that money that's collected through section 106 agreements,
05:47it can only be used on capital spending, that is, building new surgeries or expanding existing
05:53ones. It cannot be used to pay the salaries of doctors, pharmacists, nurses or any other
05:59medical staff, including receptionists and other registrars and administrative functions.
06:03All of that funding comes directly from the NHS. So this is another big issue that we have
06:10with doctor surgeries, where we fight tooth and nail, or rather the council's planning authority
06:19will fight tooth and nail for a new medical centre to be built, and the capital funding
06:23is in place and it's built in a good time, but then you have to find the revenue funding
06:29from the NHS to actually pay for the salaries, to pay for all the utilities, to keep the lights on
06:35and the electric going and all the rest of it, and very quickly that surgery can run into all
06:41kinds of viability problems. I think we sometimes assumed, or at least did before the 2008 crash,
06:48that there was endless money coming into the NHS and therefore anytime a doctor's surgery
06:54needs a financial boost they just ring the Department for Health up and they get the money
06:57in a few days. Unfortunately it's not that simple. Doctor surgeries have to run their
07:03ship as tightly as our local authority schools. I'm really sorry to hear about your experience,
07:09Anita. As far as we're aware, Langport Surgery still has a number of locally employed doctors.
07:14I know that they work very closely with the surgeries in Chard and Ilminster,
07:18and from time to time other surgeries in the area will have patients seconded to them and often
07:25take doctors in a locum basis, but thank you very much for your feedback on that. To put this into
07:31context, we're now coming to the edge of Langport itself, we're passing the Shires Garage,
07:36and in addition to the Parrot Gardens development that we passed on that side of the main road,
07:45if you go a certain way up the A372 in that direction, as if you're heading to Western
07:51Zoyland and then the back way into Bridgewater, you'll find another 36 homes that were recently
07:56delivered off, I believe it's Orchard View, but I'm more than happy to be corrected upon that.
08:03The bottom line is, Langport is seeing its fair share of new housing with the prospect of more
08:09on the way in the future, not just from the thousand homes that will be delivered there.
08:14In terms of when those homes will come forward, Outland Planning Permission is now in place,
08:19because Langport LVA LLP is a promoter rather than a house builder, it's a case of them handing
08:27it over to a development partner as we cross over. When the homes were passed in December
08:322023, a representative of the Abery Housing Association said that they would take it on
08:39and deliver both the social housing within it and the market housing, similar to what Stonewater
08:44has been doing out in Castle Carey. So we don't yet have a time frame for when building will start
08:52there, obviously there are legal negotiations going on, there may be a Reserve Matters application
08:58that comes forward changing some details about the access arrangements, the design and the layout
09:02of the houses, so we're probably looking at least a year before those homes materialise,
09:08but the thing we're interested in today, as we officially cross the boundary into Langport,
09:14is when that new surgery will see the light of day. Now, as part of the Somerton Road development,
09:23which like I say was approved a little over 13 months ago,
09:28there was a contribution that was agreed of around £50,000 to go to
09:37the expansion of Langport Surgery, and it's worth bearing in mind to give you an idea of how long
09:43this has been in the pipeline. Langport Surgery was identified as one of 14 surgeries that would
09:49need to either expand or relocate to deal with housing growth and the changes in employment to
09:56the area as far back as late 2020. Obviously the pandemic slowed a lot of things down in terms of
10:04construction, we've had inflationary pressures, especially when it comes to building houses,
10:11and we could go on and on about all the mitigating factors, but as with a lot of things in the public
10:16sector, they often take longer to materialise than we would sometimes like. However, rather
10:22than just flannel around and come up with a date out of thin air, we did actually ask the NHS Somerset
10:31ICB, that's the Integrated Care Board, for a statement on this, and while they haven't given
10:37us a precise date as for when work would start, they have at least given us a statement with a
10:43fair amount of detail. It's worth pointing out that the surgery secured planning permission
10:50for this work, I believe it was back in August last year, I'm just double checking that. Yes,
10:55it was August 2024, so the designs for the improvements have already been agreed with
11:00Somerset Council, and therefore that does take a little bit of time out of the delivery window.
11:07Anyway, this is what NHS Somerset had to say about the expansion of this doctor surgery.
11:13Langport Surgery is in the process of finalising the design and conducting a detailed cost analysis
11:20for the expansion of its premises. Once completed, this will be submitted for financial agreement
11:26with NHS Somerset. This expansion marks a significant step forward in ensuring that
11:32Langport Surgery can continue to meet the growing healthcare needs of our community,
11:37providing improved access and high quality care for our patients. Langport Surgery is committed
11:43to keeping patients informed about progress and will share updates as the project advances.
11:51So that's a statement from the Integrated Care Board, which is working with all the different
11:55medical centres across Somerset, looking for ways to secure funding for new surgeries, for expanding
12:02existing ones and generally making our GP services run more productively, efficiently
12:09and beneficially for our patients, which ultimately is the most important thing.
12:14Obviously, there'll be a lot of talk about the 10-year plan for the NHS in the coming years.
12:18We've got the review of adult social care, which is in the pipeline. There was a lot more funding
12:24for NHS in the budget back in, I believe it was October, late October, looking at the creation of
12:30new community healthcare hubs so that people can get treated quickly rather than having to go to
12:35A&E and then dealing with all the bed blocking which then impacts on social care. The point is
12:41there is a lot of thought going on in the background, planning about how healthcare can be delivered
12:48in a functional and well-funded way, improving outcomes for local patients
12:56and we will be following up in earnest with the ICB and the doctor's surgery for when spades will
13:03actually go in the ground. What we don't have, unfortunately, is a precise figure of how much
13:08money from the various housing developments has been set aside through section 106 agreements to
13:15make this happen. We know we've got the £50,000 from the Somerton Road site, which we mentioned
13:19earlier on. There are other housing developments like Parrott Gardens and so forth where money
13:24will have been set aside but we don't have a final figure for that at present.
13:31It won't be too long before we arrive at the surgery and just to comment on the route itself,
13:40obviously it's a fairly quiet Saturday in January. You can hear the traffic rumbling down the A378.
13:48The main road through Langport is quite narrow but nevertheless it's navigable
13:55and the pavements are generally in pretty good nick. I mean, I'm fairly able-bodied,
14:00though not in the best of fitness, so I would say I'm a fair judge of character.
14:06If I was in a wheelchair or a mobility scooter, there's a couple of crossings back there that
14:12I'd have to think very carefully about. The zebra crossing by the garage works well
14:16and I've not had to cross to the other side of the carriageway
14:20but it is something worth keeping an eye on as the expansion takes shape.
14:27Now what the expansion will deliver, which I suppose is very important, is existing
14:31consulting rooms within the surgery, which we're just coming up to now,
14:37allowing for additional appointments, allowing for specialists like occupational therapists
14:42and so on to operate out of the surgery, meaning that you can see lots of different
14:50kinds of support in one place rather than being referred back and forth and being sent to other
14:55sites. There'll be also more room for staff training so that we won't have so many
15:03half-day or full-day closures of surgeries as often happens from time to time.
15:09All of that should make this surgery run a lot smoother. Obviously, the surgery is closed today
15:17because it's a Saturday, but just to give you an idea, this is the building as it currently stands.
15:23We're just off the A378. You can see the town's Tesco just peeking through in the background
15:28there. We've got the River Parrot not far from behind us and along with the railway line.
15:32Sorry, the railway line's over that way, the river is over that way. It's been a while since I've
15:36been to Langport. So this existing, I'm trying to count the number of sides on it, it's a
15:42polygonal structure. I'll count the number of sides in a minute. That will be staying in place,
15:47whereas the extension will be coming onto this end of the building. We understand that a few
15:53parking spaces will have to be sacrificed and do let me know in the comments how busy this
15:58car park gets during the week because that is something they will have to take into account.
16:02But rest assured, this extension, it's got planning permission. The funding for it is
16:08being finalised and you will see action here very, very soon. Well, I hope that's been informative
16:14for you. Let me know in the comments if there are any other medical centres that you'd like us to
16:19look into. We've talked about Bruton's GP surgery in the not-too-distant past with all the housing
16:24growth in that town. There are others like Riles Park in Yeovil that we know that the ICB are
16:29looking at. We'll be doing a separate piece on that, maybe not a separate live stream, but
16:33we'll certainly consider it. And if you've missed any part of this stream, as per usual,
16:37it will be available indefinitely on our Facebook page, so do check out if you want to scroll back
16:42and through. I will be back in action this coming Monday in Wells where we'll be talking about
16:48accessibility from the Priory Field site and there'll possibly be another stream around Wells
16:53on Sunday evening, so a week tomorrow, where we'll be looking at the new section of the
16:57Strawberry Line that's opening near the city's Liddell supermarket. But in the meantime, thank
17:01you very much for your company today. This is Daniel Mumby, your local democracy reporter
17:05from Langport Surgery, and I hope the rest of your weekend is absolutely brilliant. Bye for now!