by Hayleigh Gascoigne and Sarah Medley, district councillors for the Blewbury & Harwell ward on the Vale of White Horse District Council

To recap: the decision on the planning application for Valley Park was deferred by the Vale Planning Committee on 16th Feb for three reasons:
1. The lack of provision for healthcare
2. The design of the 5-arm roundabout between Didcot and Harwell
3. Biodiversity
The planning application will only be reconsidered at committee once these issues have been adequately addressed.

Last week, we received the following update from the Vale Planning Officer for Valley Park:

“Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group has provided a further response to the application. Their latest response provides greater justification for the request for a financial contribution towards health care facilities. It also reduces the amount of financial contribution now sought to approximately £2.84m. The reduction is because their previous request included an element for land value whereas land is being provided at nil cost on GWP or as a potential fallback position if the GWP site fails to materialise, we could require the developer to provide the land at nil cost on Valley Park. Consequently, the land value element has been deducted.
In respect of the other grounds for which planning committee deferred the application i.e. the 5-arm roundabout and timing of the biodiversity contribution, we still await the applicant’s response. Consequently, I’m unable to advise of timescales for reporting the application back to planning committee.”

The full response can be found on the Valley Park Planning Application in the Consultation Responses – select the folder icon next to Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group and click on 2021-04-16 Response.pdf

Whilst this is good news for the Valley Park application, it does not address the pressing situation on the long-awaited Healthcare Centre on Great Western Park (GWP).

To try and get an answer on this, local resident and campaigner, Sally Povolotsky wrote to the CCG to pose the question at their recent annual board meeting on 15th March. She was informed that because “it did not relate to the papers at the meeting” she would have to wait 20 working days for a reply! After some chasing up, on 15th April the following response was received:

Question from Sally: When can we expect the GP surgery on GWP (Great Western Park) to be built and ready for residents to use? By providing this, does the CCG expect the subsequent increase to healthcare provision for Didcot and surrounding area to meet the need?’ If there is an alternative plan, can the CCG set out what it is and on what timescale they expect to deliver it?”

Answer from OCCG: The CCG recognises and has acknowledged in our primary care estates strategy, the expected population growth in Didcot as a result of the new housing developments. Our latest data shows that the number of GP registered patients in Didcot has increased by just over 3800 between October 2017 and October 2020. We have been working with the practices, councils and more recently the PPGs to ensure that there is adequate primary care provision in Didcot. We are currently working with the Council planning for a new surgery on the GWP site. However there are many hurdles / hoops to still go, including planning permission, business case approval, affordability and value for money as defined by the District Valuer. Therefore at this stage we are unable to provide a date by which any new surgery will be ready to use. Alongside this we continue to work with the local councils to ensure that we achieve developers contributions for new housing developments in order to support health infrastructure for the new population.

We really don’t think that this is a sufficient answer from the OCCG. Given that the building of houses on GWP started a decade ago and is now almost complete, there has been more than enough time for this to be progressed, it’s inexcusable that the surgery isn’t already built and open for patients. The suggestion that the OCCG “continue to work with local councils to ensure that we achieve developers contributions for new housing developments” is also somewhat misleading, making it sound like there has been a much more proactive effort on the part of the OCCG than what we know to be a reality.

In light of this, at the latest Full Council meeting of the Vale in March 2021, we (Hayleigh and Sarah) proposed a motion on improving the working relationship between the council and the OCCG, to avoid this ongoing problem of lack of healthcare provision for new housing developments. We are pleased to say that the motion passed, so hopefully this will provide the basis for the situation to improve in future.

It is clear that the lack of healthcare provision for the existing Great Western Park and the planned Valley Park developments is a big issue, but don’t just take our word for it; Healthwatch Oxfordshire recently published their report on Didcot Healthcare. You can access the full report here, but for us the most striking section of the report was the following:

If, like us, you find that numbers and data help put these things into context, here are some very striking statistics provided by Stewart Lilly, chair of the Woodlands Medical Centre Patient Participation Group:

• The three existing GP surgeries in Didcot are already overstretched and under immense pressure, approaching dangerous levels. Currently patient numbers are approaching 50,000.  
• Compare the above with Banbury – some 75,000 patients served by 9 surgeries and a hospital (The Horton).  
• With over 4000 new houses and an estimated population of 10,000 people, Valley Park will be a new development equivalent to the size of Wallingford: yet note that the town of Wallingford has at least one GP medical centre!

On that note, we’ll end this blog post where we started – reiterating just how vital it is that there is adequate healthcare provision on Valley Park before plans are approved to start building houses. If you agree with this, please show your support by signing our Health before Housing petition.

We hope this blog post has provided a useful summary of the latest situation regarding healthcare provision in and around Didcot. As your district councillors, we are very aware of this issue and we are pushing it whenever and wherever we can, to try and get answers. However, much of the decision making and influencing around healthcare is done at the County Council level; they are responsible for Adult Health and Social Care.

On 6th May, when deciding who to vote for as your county councillor, we urge you to vote for a local candidate who is already aware of the healthcare issues facing the Didcot area, and who has a track record of getting things done: Vote for Sally Povolotsky on 6th May.

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