Health centre will herald a new care era

PATIENTS are to move to a multi-million pound health centre under plans to transform NHS care.

The centre will be built in Tunstall where a previous scheme was downsized and booted to the bottom of a list of priorities two years ago.

Now the city's primary care trust has won planning permission for the project, which is due to be completed next December on the former Alexandra Pottery site in Scotia Road.

GP practices in the town's Dunning Street Health Centre will transfer together with the dental access centre, district nurses, health visitors, school nurses and nurse-led clinics for patients such as those with diabetes and heart failure.

Other services will include blood testing, paediatric physiotherapy, podiatry, speech therapy and diet help.

There will be parking for 241 cars, landscaped grounds and a courtyard garden and pedestrian and cycle access to the city's Greenway Network.

Community leaders last night welcomed the development as adding to the "growing vibrancy" of Tunstall.

Multi-million pound centres have already sprung up in Shelton, Fenton and Packmoor in the last three years and a much bigger one is being developed in Cobridge.

Besides ridding the city of crumbling buildings which have housed surgeries for decades, the programme aims to shift huge numbers of outpatients appointments from the new super hospital in Hartshill to venues closer to people's homes.

Project manager Sandra Jones said: "This is part of the PCT programme for modernising health care premises in Stoke-on-Trent. It will be a two-storey facility to be developed by Dransfield Properties Ltd."

In 2007, health chiefs ruled out a project double the size, which had been planned for Tunstall as they claimed it was unaffordable.

It was to contain doctors and dental surgeries, x-ray departments, pharmacies and an outpatients centre where consultants could treat people, all in a structure served by 12 lifts.

But there were fears a scaled down version to replace Dunning Street could be put back a decade after being down-graded in the PCT's priority list.

Tunstall councillor and city health scrutiny committee member Lee Wanger said: "The signing off of this vital scheme is great news for Tunstall and will add to the town's vibrancy on top of new housing and stores already completed or planned.

"There are already modern surgeries in Furlong Road and across the road from the old Dunning Street centre which has much to be desired.

"So this plan will complete the picture and add another piece in the jigsaw of better healthcare premises for the city as a whole."

PCT chief executive Graham Urwin said: "This is the beginning of what we hope will be an exciting new era for healthcare in Tunstall, which we know will have major health benefits for the people of the town."