Ludlow News
GP campaigners in Ludlow will stage a march in bid to stop plans to move town's surgeries
3:49pm Wednesday 22nd February 2012
A MARCH from Ludlow town centre to the Eco Park will be part of the ongoing campaign to get a change of heart about the future of GP facilities.
The walk that will be made up of people of all ages, is intended to emphasise the inconvenience that campaigners claim will result when the two GP surgeries relocate to the new hospital and health village in 2014.
Joyce Brand, a leader of the SALT (Save a Ludlow Town Surgery) campaign, says that more than 100 people crammed into Ludlow Conference Centre for a public meeting to discuss the issue.
“The turnout was fantastic and we had people of all ages and circumstances united by a concern about taking all the GP services out of the town centre,”
she said.
Also planned are a series of exercises in which people including the elderly with walking frames and young families with buggies will try to get to the Eco Park to test claims that it is easily accessible.
Joyce Brand said that the best solution would be to allow a new surgery to open in the town and forecast that this would mean that the two practices planning to move to the Eco Park will lose patients.
“We had a show of hands at the meeting and from where I was sitting everyone indicated that they would prefer to change doctors’ if it would enable them to continue to be treated in the town centre.
“I believe the most effective thing will be the threat of competition. We need to remember that GP surgeries are run as businesses so there is no point in appealing to their better nature.”
She said that the campaigners stand behind their view that consultation about the changes was not representative of opinion.
“When the consultation was undertaken the decision to have the hospital and GP surgeries on the other side of the A49 had not been made and I suspect the outcome would have been different had this been known.”