Parsons Green walk-in centre could close at end of March
Parsons Green walk-in centre in Hammersmith and Fulham could close at the end of March, NHS documents suggest.
Health campaigners say it is well-used, and that it takes pressure off the A&E department at Charing Cross Hospital. In 2018, the walk-in centre saw nearly 25,000 cases.
Questions about the centre’s future first emerged in September last year, but campaigners claim that local NHS chiefs knew of the plans in 2018.
In the run-up to the December general election, local Conservative politicians, including re-elected Chelsea and Fulham MP Greg Hands, repeatedly assured voters the centre would not close.
But a report published this week by Hammersmith and Fulham’s NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) gave a discouraging update.
The report said: “The CCG has been given an extension until March 31, 2020 to work through the processes for determining how the current services can be provided going forward and we will be undertaking engagement on this over the coming weeks.”
A spokesman for the for the CCG said yesterday it was “in discussion with both the service provider, Central London Community Healthcare Trust, and NHS England on the options for the future of the service.”
The spokesman did not rule out that the Parsons Green walk-in centre could close.
Jim Grealy, a founding member of Hammersmith and Fulham Save Our NHS, said: “We understand that the closure is going to happen on March 31.
“It’s used by 25,000 people upwards per year, that’s on figures from two years ago. We have asked where those people would go, and the alternatives are very few.
“GP appointments are already a two to three-week wait in this borough.
“There’s the urgent care centre at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, and one at Charing Cross, which also has an A&E. They would have to mop this up.”
Mr Grealy, whose colleagues worked for years to help save Charing Cross Hospital, added: “We will continue campaigning for it to stay open.”
The walk-in centre’s future is in doubt because NHS England plans to phase out the use of these centres across the country.
Many of them will instead become urgent treatment centres. NHS England’s website says these will be “GP-led, open at least 12-hours-a-day, every day, offer appointments that can be booked through 111 or through a GP referral”.
Unlike walk-in centres, the new urgent treatment centres will not be available without booking an appointment.
The CCG report goes on: “The walk-in centre at Parsons Green does not meet the criteria to become an urgent treatment centre and there are no plans to commission a third UTC within the borough.
“Most of the activity currently provided from the walk-in centre is primary care related which, in other parts of the borough, is delivered in primary care settings [GP surgeries].”
Pictured are Save Our NHS campaigners at Parsons Green walk-in centre. Jim Grealy is third from right