£6 million Dudley GP centre put on hold
A new £6 million health centre planned in Lye offering GP practices and specialist treatments for thousands of patients has been shelved, it has emerged.
NHS Dudley was given permission to build the complex on land between Clinic Drive and Jackson Street at the start of 2013 but nothing has happened in the two years since amid claims funding has dried up.
Councillors have been left frustrated by a lack of progress and it has now been confirmed the proposal is under review, raising huge doubts about whether it will ever be built on the increasingly overgrown site.
Artist impressions submitted with the plans promised a glittering new medical centre for the site. Both the Limes Surgery in High Street and Pedmore Road Surgery would have relocated there under the plans.
The facility would also have featured treatment rooms for physiotherapy, podiatry, speech and language therapy.
Midwifery and community nursing teams and counselling services would also have been based on site. When the proposals were unveiled, health bosses were hopeful the centre would be open by August 2013.
Lindsey Harding, spokeswoman for the Dudley Clinical Commissioning Group, said: "In 2013 with the abolition of the primary care trust, responsibility for primary care and the estate moved to NHS England.
"Dudley CCG has recently taken responsibility for primary care back and we are currently reviewing the whole health estate to ensure we have premises across the borough that are fit for purpose and meet the population needs.
"We are unable to comment on individual centres or locations."
Ward councillor Mohammed Hanif said it would be 'disappointing' if the centre didn't come to fruition.
He said: "It would have been a good thing for Lye, a regeneration of that area. I think there was some funding that never came and that's why they haven't been able to proceed. They have gone back to square one and I don't think anything is happening."
