A Colne Valley GP has stated that there are no plans to close practices and that there will be no redundancies of staff’ at two community health practices, after it was revealed that they could merge due to a funding squeeze.

Jonathan Ring, a partner of Marsden Health Centre, made the assurances to patients at the surgery and neighbouring Colne Valley Family Doctors, which are now putting together a business proposal to send to NHS England to try cut down on back office costs.

He said the merger idea had been around one year in the making and hopes it will allow the practices to ‘safeguard front line services’ for over 10,000 people in the community and even increase the range of appointments and services on offer.

Plans for the merger were highlighted to Marsden Health Centre’s patients’ October newsletter, in which staff said that although Marsden was a ‘high performing practice’ it was ‘not immune from the funding squeeze that is affecting all of the health service’.

They hope, if successful, the merger, which has been talked about since late last year, will take place within the next 18 months.

Dr Ring, said: “The whole of primary care across the country has these same problems of funding.

“We want to protect services for patients and are now in the process of getting the opinions of hospitals, the Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Group and patients at both practices.

“At the moment it’s only a proposal and isn’t something that is set in stone but we hope to submit our plans this side of Christmas.

“We can’t talk about the specifics at the moment but it would involve stripping the amount of paperwork down which would give us more funding for front line services.”

According to medical news providers, Pulse Today, who have launched a campaign to stop GP closures, surgery mergers are now becoming increasingly common due to funding pressures and recruitment problems.

But Dr Ring said that the practices would continue as normal if their proposal is turned down.

Patients at both practices are now being asked to fill in forms at each surgery to give their opinions on the plans.

He said: “We are keen to see what NHS England think and want to get the views of our patients so that we can go forward with the proposal.

“And if it is not accepted by the body we will continue as we are at present.”