BEFORE long the number of residents at Old Sarum, including Longhedge, will reach 4,000.

A population that size should justify two or three GPs.

Yet on the evidence currently available, they won’t have a single doctor, let alone a surgery.

Tonight Wiltshire Council’s Southern Area planning committee will debate an officers’ recommendation to let the developer Persimmon turn the site earmarked for a surgery into seven flats instead.

True, these would be ‘affordable’ homes, for which there is great need.

But what has happened to the principle of sustainable development? Coherent communities? Created round the kind of local facilities that made Hampton Park so successful?

When Old Sarum’s builders first tried to interest buyers – many of them young families - in the new out-of-town estate, the prospect of a doctor on the doorstep must have been an attractive selling point.

Now they are arguing that there is no one willing to provide the service.

NHS England says local practices don’t want to expand into Old Sarum, although they are worried about the impact of all those extra patients on their lists. As we all should be, if we don’t want to face even longer waits for our own appointments.

However, I happen to know that interest in taking on the role has been expressed on more than one occasion.

The cost was prohibitive, and the NHS bureaucracy did not support the request. It’s in the grip of ‘bigger is better’ centralisation mania. (When it’s not busy flogging off bits of the service, that is.) But I can’t say my experience as a patient at the spanking new combined Salisbury Medical Practice is any better than at the old Grove House, except for the onsite pharmacy.

My preferred doctor is always booked up weeks ahead, so I’ve taken to making appointments with whoever’s on duty at the practice’s Bishopdown outpost, because it’s quicker.

The fact that the NHS is in organisational chaos (ask the district nurses!) is not really an excuse for failing to provide for Old Sarum.

The planners are saying there is “no third party evidence” that a need exists, and there has not been a “significant”

response from residents to the developers’ application.

However, the views submitted by Laverstock & Ford Parish Council, Old Sarum Residents’ Association, Winterbourne Parish Council and Salisbury City Council contradict this.

Furthermore, Wiltshire’s core strategy states that the loss of a community facility will only be supported “as a last resort” where it can be shown that no other viable community use can be found for the building.

Are we sure we’re at that point yet?

  •  anneriddle36@gmail.com