The Bradley Stoke Journal

Bradley Stoke’s first-ever dental practice remains on track to open early next year in the town’s new Willow Brook Centre.

Residents seeking treatment currently have to travel to Patchway, Stoke Gifford, Winterbourne, or Filton to find an NHS dentist, but from April 2009 a two surgery practice will be available in Bradley Stoke’s new town centre.

South Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust (PCT) recently placed a tender advertisement for the new practice in the British Dental Journal and a PCT spokesperson has given the following update to The Journal:

All the bids are in and South Gloucestershire PCT is in the process of looking at them. A paper will go to the the PCT’s Trust Board at the end of September with recommendations of the preferred supplier.

Meanwhile a new dental helpline has been launched to help people in Bristol, South Gloucestershire, North Somerset and Bath & North East Somerset find their nearest available NHS dentist. The NHS Dental Helpline can be reached on 0845 120 6680 and is available Monday to Friday, from 9am to 6pm.

The new telephone enquiry service complements the online dentist and GP search facility available via the NHS Choices website

The Government’s Planning Inspectorate has allowed an appeal by Bradley Stoke Surgery against South Gloucestershire Council’s (SGC’s) rejection of a planning application to expand the Brook Way premises by a massive 150%.

The news follows a site visit by the agency’s inspector, Timothy Ball, that took place on 30th June 2008.

In a decision announced late last week, Mr Ball rejects SGC’s objections concerning the scale of the development, its effect on the streetscene and possible highways issues resulting from inadequate car parking provision.

Conditions attached to the inspector’s decision relate to the submission and approval of a landscaping plan and a scheme of implementation for the “Green Travel Policy and Plan” proposed by the surgery in its appeal correspondence.

The scheme approved by the inspector is the larger of two separate planning applications that have been made by the surgery within the last nine months. The Examiner reported last week that SGC’s Development Control (West) Committee had ignored the recommendations of planning officers and shown a green light to an application for a smaller scheme involving a 131% increase in floorspace.

Commenting on the earlier decision regarding approval of the smaller of the two schemes, Penny Harris, Chief Executive of South Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust (PCT), said:

It is great news that the plans have been approved, making more much-needed GP services available in Bradley Stoke.

South Gloucestershire PCT continues to work with other practices and we are determined that the necessary service developments will be delivered for the rest of the area.

The surgery management has yet to comment on the recent planning decisions and has given no indication of when the enlarged facilities will come into service.

Local people are being asked to comment on suggested changes to maternity and newborn services provided in Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset.

Local Primary Care and NHS Trusts began a review into the services in 2006 and following extensive meetings and feedback from parents, staff and experts they have drawn up goals and suggestions for how the services will change.

Background documents and feedback forms are available on the Maternity and Newborn Services Review page of the Bristol Health Services Plan website.

The public consultation runs from 30th June to 17th October 2008.

A local meeting to discuss the plans will be held on Monday 22nd September 2008 at the Jubilee Centre, Savages Wood Road, Bradley Stoke.

Related pages: The Journal’s Public Consultations page.

Today’s meeting of South Gloucestershire Council’s Development Control (West) Committee is likely to decide the fate of a planning application that would see the floorspace of Bradley Stoke Surgery increase by 131%. Planning officials have already recommended refusal of the application on the grounds that -

The proposed extension, by reason of its size, design and external appearance, would be out of keeping with the existing building and, if allowed, would result in a cramped form of development that would have a detrimental effect on the streetscene …

Local Councillor Sarah Pomfret “called in” the application for a site inspection, which took place on Friday 13th June. The minutes of that inspection show that the Councillors resolved that Council officers should -

… bring forward a full and detailed report to include clarification as to whether any car parking spaces would be lost as a result of the proposal.

which seems rather odd, since a full and detailed report was already available before the site meeting, stating that planning officials had no concerns on transport grounds. The Councillors apparently made no observations on the scale of the proposal and its potential effect on the streetscene.

An earlier planning application for a scheme that would see the floorspace of the surgery increase by a massive 150% was thrown out by the Council late last year. The surgery partners appealed against that decision and the application is currently with the government’s Planning Inspectorate, whose inspector will visit the site on Monday (30th June). The Journal understands that a final decision can then be expected after a further five to six weeks.

Land previously reserved for a new health centre at Savages Wood Road currently lies vacant, after South Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust back-tracked on its original plans (announced in 2005) and instead opted for expansion of existing GP facilities. Three years on, residents of Bradley Stoke are still waiting to see the promised improvements in healthcare provision within the town.

Bradley Stoke is to gain its first dental practice, located on the upper floor of the town’s new shopping mall currently under construction in the new town centre development at Savages Wood Road.

Details of the proposed practice first came to light in the agenda for the Board Meeting of the South Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust (PCT) on 30th April 2008. Under an item titled “Tender Process for the new Bradley Stoke Dental Practice”, the Board was recommended to:

• Agree to a national tender process in line with the PCT’s contestability framework.
• Agree to the proposal to enter into a temporary lease with Tesco Stores Limited to secure the facility in Bradley Stoke whilst the tender process is completed.
• Approve the outline project plan for managing the tender process.

The proposed timeline included :

• Invitation to tender published in the British Dental Journal by 12th May 2008.
• Contract to start 8th October 2008.
• Service to commence 15th December 2008.

The PCT duly confirmed that it had entered into a lease agreement with Tesco Stores in a statement made to The Journal on 9th May 2008:

The PCT is very pleased to confirm that the PCT Board have approved a lease agreement with Tesco for the siting of a dental surgery in the new shopping centre as part of the ongoing programme of development of quality services in the area.

However, when The Journal enquired as to the progress of the tender process on 12th June 2008, we were given the following statement by the PCT:

The PCT is commissioning a new dental service in Bradley Stoke with an anticipated opening date of April 2009. The site has been secured and will be a two surgery practice within the new Mall currently being developed as part of the Tesco development.

An advert [has been] placed in the British Dental Journal. The deadline [for expressions of interest] is 25th June.

The PCT did not indicate why the projected opening date has slipped from December 2008 to April 2009.

The town’s new two-storey shopping mall (pictured below - under construction) is attached to the new Tesco Extra store and is due to open in “late autumn [2008]” according to the latest available information released by Tesco.

More information about Bradley Stoke’s new town centre development can be found elsewhere in The Journal:

• New Town Centre posts
• New Town Centre pages

Photos of the new town centre construction work can be seen in our PicasaWeb Gallery.

The Sites Inspection West Sub Committee of South Gloucestershire Council (SGC) visits Bradley Stoke Surgery in Brook Way today (Friday 13th), to assess a planning application for an extension that would see its floorspace increase by 131%.

An earlier planning application by the surgery, which would have seen the floorspace increase by a whopping 150%, was rejected by SGC planning officers in December 2007. That application has gone to appeal with the government’s Planning Inspectorate, but information obtained by The Journal suggests that a final decision could still be months away.

The revised planning application, submitted in April 2008, has also failed to impress the planning officers, who have recommended that the SGC Planning Committee refuse permission on the following grounds:

The proposed extension, by reason of its size, design and external appearance, would be out of keeping with the existing building and, if allowed, would result in a cramped form of development that would have a detrimental effect on the streetscene …

Today’s site inspection was requested by SGC Councillor Sarah Pomfret, who also sits on Bradley Stoke Town Council. Doctor Elizabeth Todd, the practice’s senior partner and Julian Barge, the practice’s manager, are also members of the Town Council.

Expansion of the Brook Way surgery forms part of South Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust’s (PCT) plan to enhance healthcare provision in Bradley Stoke. The PCT made the following statement to The Journal after the original planning application had been rejected:

The PCT Board supported the individual GP practice plans for development in Bradley Stoke. We are aware that one proposal has been turned down when initially submitted for planning. The PCT is therefore working with all the practices to ensure that the necessary service developments proceed as proposed for the area.

The PCT had previously planned to construct a new health centre on land at Savages Wood Road, which had been offered to it at a “knockdown” price by SGC [see earlier report in The Journal], but changed course in 2006 when it announced it would instead invest in expansion of three existing health centres already serving the town.

With the Brook Way expansion plans in jeopardy, The Journal has pressed the PCT to reveal details of its plans for expansion at other surgeries serving the town, but it has refused to release any further information.

Meanwhile, the land previously reserved for a new health centre at Savages Wood Road lies vacant. Possible disposal of the land was listed on an agenda for a meeting of the SGC cabinet on 12th May, but a source at SGC’s Property Services department told The Journal that the matter could not be discussed because the PCT had not yet informed the Council of its intentions regarding the land.

Users of the overstretched GP services in Bradley Stoke are unlikely to be impressed by this sorry saga.

Bradley Stoke has for years had just a single health centre within its boundaries, serving a population that has now reached 20,000. It is widely agreed that further provision is necessary, but progress towards that goal has been slow and fraught with political in-fighting.

In 2005, South Gloucestershire Council (SGC) thought it was scoring political brownie points by announcing that it was providing valuable land, at a “knockdown price”, for the construction of a new health centre in Savages Wood Road. [Read the announcement on the Bradley Stoke Town Council website.] The land in question is a one acre site that remains undeveloped on the left of the access road leading to the existing Tesco store from the Three Brooks roundabout, between the new David Wilson Homes development and the 3 metre high “acoustic boundary” fence that has recently been erected alongside the public footpath leading towards Manor Farm Crescent.

However, hopes were dashed in 2006, when South Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust (PCT) decided not to develop the site, but instead to invest in expansion of three existing health centres already serving the town. This change of direction by the PCT, coupled with a change in the political make-up of SGC in May 2007, led to a public spat between SGC and the PCT, as evidenced by documents issued by both parties in September 2007. [SGC letter to PCT; PCT press release]

November 2007 saw a formal planning application for the expansion of the existing Bradley Stoke Surgery in Brook Way. The Town Council’s Planning, Environment & Amenities Committee had “no objection in principle” to the plans at their meeting of 28th November 2007, save to point out that they would “drastically reduce the number of parking spaces that is already inadequate and the extension will further conceal the existence of the Community Centre to the rear of the site”.

South Gloucestershire Council refused the application on 24th December 2007, citing, in addition to the parking concerns of the Town Council, that the “cramped form of the development would have a detrimental effect on the streetscene”.

The Surgey management has appealed the SGC decision and the case will now be examined by the government’s Planning Inspectorate, with a decision expected in May 2008.