Rayleigh and Wickford MP, Mark Francois, recently met with senior NHS officials from the Mid and South Essex Integrated Care Board (ICB) to lobby them to expand two local GP practices - The Jones Family Practice, in Hockley and Riverside Medical Centre, in Hullbridge.
During the meeting, which also included senior management from both GP practices and Cllr Ian Foster of Rochford District Council, Mark raised his concerns about the constant barriers that both surgeries were experiencing in trying to expand their practices, in order to help serve their growing number of patients. A related issue raised by both surgeries concerned the lack of communication that they had previously received from the ICB. Tracy Dowling, the newly appointed Interim Chief Executive of the ICB reassured both practices that she would investigate this further and improve the level of service being provided.
Whilst some positive movement was made during the course of the meeting, Mark was very keen to keep momentum up and therefore asked every attendee to reconvene in around a month’s time, to provide an update on the progress made in each case.
Commenting after the meeting, Mark said:
“Both of these popular GP practices, in Hockley and Hullbridge respectively, need expanded premises in order to accommodate the extra patients that they have been taking on in recent years. As this requires assistance from the ICB, I called for this face-to-face meeting, to try to move things forward. We made some progress but there is further to go. Both practices will now discuss this directly with the ICB and we all agreed to meet again, after Easter, to review progress – which I hope we will see.”
