A much-needed doctor’s surgery, which could serve 15,000 patients, will be delivered for Congresbury and Yatton if planning permission can be secured.

North Somerset Times: Mendip Vale Medical Practice in Station Road, Congresbury.Mendip Vale Medical Practice in Station Road, Congresbury. (Image: Archant)

Mendip Vale Medical Practice has submitted an application to North Somerset Council to build a medical centre in Smallway, opposite Cadbury Garden Centre, in a bid to modernise and expand health services.

Mendip Vale operates surgeries across North Somerset, including small provisions in Congresbury and Yatton which are ‘wholly inadequate and not fit for modern day uses’ – falling well short of recommended size guidelines, according to planning documents.

Executive manager David Clark believes the new practice would ‘provide a wider range of services closer to home’ for a lengthening list of patients, which could swell to 15,000 in the coming years with projected housing growth in both Yatton and Congresbury expected.

The new facility would be home to consulting rooms and clinical space, a pharmacy, a parking bay for a mobile MRI scanner and endoscopy unit, and 85 parking spaces.

Mr Clark said: “The sites at Yatton and Congresbury have no room left. We have taken out as much back office and administration space as we can for clinical rooms.

“Under current guidelines we are more than 30 per cent below the recommended space needed to serve our patients.

“We saw a three per cent increase in patients registering with us across our sites in 2017, which is more than 750 people, and without a new build we will struggle to provide sufficient services in Yatton and Congresbury.”

The two-storey surgery is planned in the strategic gap between Congresbury and Yatton, which is a buffer designed to keep the villages separate, but Mr Clark believes Smallway is the best location to provide care to patients.

He added: “By having this new build we would have space to provide a wider range of services closer to home that reduces reliance on acute hospitals, for example dermatology and ophthalmology.

“This should assist in providing services more promptly and cost effectively, enabling savings to be reinvested in other pressurised areas such as paediatric mental health.”