ANOTHER £1.4bn shake-up of the NHS is only two months away.

Primary Care Trust, NHS Kirklees, is set to be scrapped at the end of March with a new group, chiefly made up of local GPs set to take over.

The group, to be known as the NHS Greater Huddersfield CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group), has now been given the green light to take the reins having gone through a rigorous NHS authorisation process.

The services it will be responsible for include doctors, dentists, opticians and health centres.

Acute services such Huddersfield Royal Infirmary and the Calderdale Royal Hospital will continue to be operated by Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust.

Health chiefs have vowed the move – which comes a little over six years from the merging of the North Kirklees PCT and Huddersfield Central and South Huddersfield PCTs – will help boost “joined up” thinking.

They say they will work in close partnership with other health and social care providers such as Kirklees Council, Locala, hospitals and mental health service providers.

NHS Greater Huddersfield CCG, which will take charge of much of the health budget, has now moved into the NHS Kirklees offices at Bradley in preparation for its official launch on April 1.

Chair and clinical lead of the CCG, Dr Steve Ollerton, said: “We’re delighted – authorisation means that we have the official seal of approval for the arrangements we have put in place to make sure we can achieve our ambition of commissioning the best possible NHS services for the people living in the Greater Huddersfield area.”

Carol McKenna, chief officer of NHS Greater Huddersfield CCG, added: “ This is fantastic news and I’m very proud of what our new team has managed to achieve in a very short space of time.

“They have risen to the challenge of creating a new organisation and faced close scrutiny during a full day authorisation inspection visit – and have emerged with flying colours.”

The Government introduced CCGs in the 2012 Health and Community Care Act in a bid to put doctors in control of health services.

The move will lead to the abolition of the 151 primary care trusts and 10 strategic health authorities that oversee them.

It will cost £1.4bn to introduce, a figure which the Government says will be easily recouped by the savings made by scrapping PCTs and strategic health authorities. On top of that, the NHS is being opened up even further to the private sector.

NHS Greater Huddersfield CCG is one of 211 clinical commissioning groups across the UK.

It is made up of 40 local GP practices which are working together to lead and improve the NHS.

The plan to get GPs more involved has been widely welcomed although some question whether PCTs have to go to achieve that.

The British Medical Association and Royal College of GPs have suggested doctors could have just been given a more prominent role on the boards of PCTs.

Some health managers have said the scale of the changes could destabilise hospitals and force some units to close.

Meanwhile, unions, including the British Medical Association, Royal College of Nursing and Unison, have warned they represent a privatisation of the health service.