No GPs apply to take over Lake District practice despite year-long campaign

Getty Images/Matt_Gibson

By Daniel Pye

A GP practice in a scenic Lake District village is still without a permanent doctor nearly a year after a residents' campaign to find one.

Locals launched a petition, which gathered 1,000 signatures, to keep Coniston Medical Practice open and the village’s parish council collaborated with local filmmakers to create an ad campaign following the retirement of the last GP.

But no applicants have come forward to fill the vacancy.

In August, the service transferred to Morecambe Bay Primary Care Collaborative, but the integrated care board only granted the contract for six months. A spokesperson from NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB said this was to keep the service running while it tendered a contract.

The bids were opened on the Find A Tender portal from 23 December until 4 February.
The Coniston Patient Group, which has campaigned to keep GP services in one of England’s most rural areas since 2014, said “allowing the service to disappear would create a cliff edge in patient care for Coniston and the surrounding rural communities, many of whom face long and difficult journeys to alternative surgeries”.

It said there was “serious concern that the timing of the recruitment process undermined its success” by releasing the contract on 23 December, immediately before Christmas.

When the ICB was asked about this, it said it had allowed an additional two weeks over the standard 30 days for any interested parties to prepare their bid.

The surgery in Wraysdale House, Coniston (Credit: Dr Katharina Frey)

‘We will now consider options’

Peter Tinson, director of primary care at NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board said: “The ICB will now consider options for how patients in the Coniston area can continue to receive services and a decision will be taken in due course. We will provide an update on this as soon as we are able.

“In the meantime, the practice will continue to run as it has under the management of the Morecambe Bay Primary Care Collaborative.”

In March, Doctors.net.uk, spoke to one of the outgoing GPs Dr Katharina Frey. She said the survival of the surgery, which is a dispensing practice, is “extremely important” to the village.

The surgery also offers a minor injuries unit to deal with the “big influx” of tourists and second homeowners between March and October.

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