A question mark still hangs over the fate of a popular Chorley GP after NHS bosses said they needed time to consider specialist legal advice before deciding how to determine the future of her practice. Dr. Ann Robinson has run Withnell Health Centre for the past 11 years. But when a partnership with another doctor at the surgery was dissolved at the end of 2021, the contract to provide GP services from the Railway Road facility had to be opened up to anybody who wanted to bid for it.
That process ended a year ago, with Dr. Robinson being told that she had lost out to a conglomerate that operates more than 40 practices across the North West. However, the NHS’s decision later unravelled after the Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB) accepted that users of the health centre had not been properly consulted – leaving Dr. Robinson and her patients in limbo