Published: 16 February 2012
by TOM FOOT

NHS campaigners are writing to doctors asking them to bring the surgeries taken over by private firms in 2008 back under public control.

A meeting of Camden Keep Our NHS Public (CKONP) on Tuesday night agreed to approach GPs in the hope they could take over the three surgeries run by the Practice Plc.

The company’s contract to run surgeries in King’s Cross Road and at the Brunswick Medical Centre – as well as the Camden Road practice, which is set to close in April – comes to an end in 2013.

Candy Udwin, CKONP chairwoman, said: “We will be contacting doctors to see if they can help bring the surgeries back to the NHS.

"It has been done before: James Wigg helped with the Queen’s Crescent Surgery, and the same thing happened at Ampthill.”

The New Journal understands the extent of the “thorough search” to find a new home for the Camden Road Surgery amounted to a single conversation on the phone with officials in the Town Hall.

NHS officials told the health scrutiny committee last Thursday that they had been working with Camden Council on behalf of the surgery’s private operators, the Practice Plc, to find alternative premises.

Tony Hoolaghan, from the North Central London NHS Trust (NCL), told the meeting: “There wasn’t any building suitable for a clinical environment.

"We did go to the council’s property people about this.”

NCL contacted the Town Hall about whether space in 79 Camden Road, the former social services building, was available.

But Mr Hoolaghan was told that building is already on the market and there were no other vacant former GP practices in the area.

Other properties would require a “change of use” application and would need funding to make “clinically appropriate”.

A council spokes­woman said: “We can confirm that we don’t own any properties that are clinically equipped and of sufficient quality for this purpose without investment.”

Patients of Camden Road Practice are forming a group to oppose the closure.

Contact Maeve O’Connor on 020 7383 3092.

LETTERS: 'Bad practice in primary care'... (click here)

LETTERS: 'Flim-flam!'... (click here)