Our Statement on Welborne Garden Village

January 2024

The Welborne development, a substantial garden village project planning an additional 6,000 homes over 20 years, currently falls entirely within the Wickham Surgery Practice Boundary. Wickham Surgery, a key healthcare stakeholder, has dedicated over 7 years to collaborating with Health Commissioners for a viable solution.

Wickham Surgery has consistently advocated that all residents within the Welborne development should receive healthcare in its own dedicated facility. However, recognising the need for immediate healthcare provision, we understand that existing services may be required to accommodate patients in the earliest phase of development.

After extensive negotiations with health commissioners of the Integrated Care Board (ICB), Wickham Surgery agreed to provide healthcare for the first 690 homes, covering the initial 5 years and constituting approximately 10% of the total development. This allows time for authorities to devise a comprehensive solution for the rest of the development—ideally, its own health facility.

To safeguard future patient services, those in the initial 690 homes must continue to receive primary care at Wickham Surgery. The only way to achieve this is to redraw the Wickham Surgery Practice boundary to reflect the above plan. However, the application for this boundary change was rejected by the Primary Care Commissioning Committee in November. This surprising decision has left the entirety of the Welborne development within the Wickham Practice Boundary, creating an untenable and worrying situation that the Surgery clearly cannot accommodate.

Without the boundary change, the Practice is vulnerable to significant patient population fluctuations during different development phases, further endangering the practice's viability.

Wickham Surgery strongly urges health commissioners to agree to the boundary change immediately. Further delay is unjustifiable, unacceptable, and poses a risk to our future sustainability.

Published: Jan 30, 2024