We are writing to inform you that the application to merge the Humber Road, Melbourne House and Tennyson House surgeries has now been approved by NHS England and we will be merging from 25th November 2019.

We believe that our three surgeries currently offer a high standard of personalised care, but as comparatively small practices we are vulnerable to many of the challenges facing primary care such as recruitment, rising demand and a decreasing number of prospective GP partners. In addition, newer models of care and work for allied professionals are harder to put in place in a smaller practice. We believe that forming a larger practice will improve our sustainability for the future, which means continuity for our patients and the opportunity for them to benefit from a wider range of services and innovative working.

We are confident that a merger will be successful because our three practices have longstanding connections locally, have overlapping practice boundaries and share a similar ethos. Merging our practices will allow us to expand the number of services available to patients and attract a range of staff with complementary skills to our own. The merger will also support the delivery of extended hours, increasing the number of appointments that we are able to make available to patients.

The Humber Road practice has also been given separate approval to close its branch surgery at Sunrise Avenue. This is because the practice has continued to experience difficulty in managing and sustaining the Sunrise branch and feels that it is no longer able to deliver the services it would like to from this site.

We held a drop-in session on 12th September 2019 which was well attended by patients from all three practices and any concerns were addressed by the GP Partners.