LAST month this column urged GPs from three central practices to ‘open up’ about their plans for a super-surgery.

Now that they’ve done so, we can begin to weigh up whether they’ve found the cure for Salisbury’s ills.

On Monday they were given a polite but sceptical reception by members of the city council, which will soon become the sole owner of their preferred site, Lime Kiln Meadow in Harnham, under the Wiltshire asset transfer.

Everyone present understood the difficulties facing the medical profession in a city stuffed with charmingly awkward historic buildings.

Naturally, developers look to green fields. It’s easy, and if you reckon you require 2.5 acres, which these guys do, we’re not awash with choice.

I feared the lure of the loot – plus the dangled carrot of a new community centre - might prove powerful for our elected representatives.

But.

Think of the extra traffic at the Harnham gyratory.

Think of the ‘red list’ endangered breeding birds – the linnet, yellowhammer, and corn bunting – plus the ‘amber listed’ common whitethroat, on this county wildlife site. None were mentioned in the would-be developers’ ecology report.

Think of the 17 types of butterfly, most notably the brimstone – a priority conservation species – and two varieties of orchid. Plus the lovely views.

With so much recent development in East Harnham, talk of hundreds of homes to be built around the hospital, and a population apparently set for infinite expansion, the council had rightly intended to treasure this open space for walkers and wildlife.

As councillor Margaret Willmot explained: “We’ve been given it to look after for the future.”

Unfortunately the future looming on the doctors’ horizon is March 2019, when potential government funding will disappear, and that’s hardly the best frame of mind in which to approach a decision that will affect 25,500 patients, with so many wider repercussions.

The GPs argued that they need to plonk a three-storey building, with 250 parking spaces, on this scenic spot to give them room to deliver cancer treatment, physio and other stuff that our hospital won’t offer any longer.

No, I don’t know why it won’t. Makes no sense to me. There was even a passing suggestion that the hospital might close.

They said this would be the shape of general practice to come. Offering state-of-the-art facilities would help us fend off a medical ‘brain drain’.

They said that by retaining the Three Swans surgery – currently “bulging at the seams” – they could cater sufficiently for city residents with mobility problems.

I wonder about that, with the concentration of sheltered housing in the centre and more being built right next door.

To be told - which is pretty much what it amounted to - that the fate of the local NHS rests in their hands seemed a bit harsh on the members of our parish’s policy and resources committee.

They asked for a lot more information about other potential sites, and stressed that it would be up to the full council to decide what’s best for the public.

I don’t know whether the doctors will come up with a Plan B, but I hope so.

anneriddle36@gmail.com