A Health and Wellbeing Hub provides joined up health and social care along with voluntary and community groups in a modern, state-of-the-art building. This means services working more closely together, under one roof. With the pressures faced in General Practice (GP) services, the overall ambition is to increase levels of care in the community and deliver a wider range of suitable services closer to people’s homes.

Working in partnership with the local authority, community services and charity organisations, the Shrewsbury Health and Wellbeing Hub would pioneer a new way of working that would bring multiple services under one roof, reducing the need for patients to move to different places for different healthcare appointments.

The hub is part of a vision to ensure that future investment in the NHS is made in a clearer and more planned way. The investment would be made into a professionally-managed building that would be run by the Integrated Care System (ICS), is purpose-built to deal with increased pressures and to improve General Practice services and other health services for patients.

We need to change the way we deliver some of our health services to make them easier for people to access and to make them more sustainable for the future. At least two practices involved in the Health and Wellbeing Hub project need to move from their existing locations due to lease issues - other practices have capacity issues.

There are also other challenges in General Practice; GP practices sometimes have difficulty recruiting enough GPs and they are therefore recruiting to different roles, such as Advanced Nurse Practitioners, Clinical Pharmacists and First Contact Physios, to help support patients. This means that they don’t always have enough space in their existing buildings for their whole team. As the NHS invests in new staff to support GP practices, it is necessary to provide more accommodation for these new members which cannot currently be done at the existing locations.

Some GP practices also aren’t very modern, and they don’t offer the latest facilities for patients. We want to offer up-to-date facilities that are easy for patients to access, for example, people who have mobility issues. We also need to think about the future; we have a growing population and more demand for appointments and so we want to be able to expand to meet these needs.

The problems in General Practice are significant and we need to be able to change the way health and care services are delivered to make it better for patients. When you consider that 90% of all patient contact in the NHS is within General Practice this gives you a good indication of the level of pressures experienced.

People are also living longer and often have long-term conditions such as diabetes, obesity and musculoskeletal diseases associated with an ageing population. We therefore need to offer General Practice services in a different way to help to support this need.

The primary aim of the Shrewsbury Health and Wellbeing Hub is for patients to be able to access a range of services under one roof, helping to prevent illness and encourage people to lead longer, healthier lives.

The hub has the potential to bring health and social care professionals, as well as the voluntary sector, into a single state-of-the-art centre to provide a combination of services for people with the greatest health needs and lowest life expectancy in the area.

Patients would be able to access different services, in addition to GP services, in one location, in modern facilities, and would provide easy access and parking for patients. Furthermore, and depending on the services within the hub, it may mean that patients don’t have to travel to a hospital site for some appointments or to different locations for other services.

A modern centre with up-to-date facilities would provide a safer and more attractive working environment for both professionals and patients, which would help with the recruitment and retention of staff including GPs. This would improve access to appointments for patients and would also provide the capacity to extend GP services in the future.

A Health and Wellbeing Hub is being proposed for Shrewsbury to meet current and future patient and practice needs. This is a pilot project and there may be scope to extend it in the future based on patient and practice needs in other areas.

Due diligence is currently being undertaken to establish costings and benchmark costs against market competitors to ensure value for money for the taxpayer. Value for money will be a key part of the business case.

Costs will also be offset by not having to continue to invest in poor quality buildings and instead transferring existing funds to a new modern fit for purpose building. In addition, the new building will be eco-friendly and significant savings will be made in energy costs.

As part of our engagement plans over the coming months, we will be hosting face-to-face public meetings to share details on the hub and to allow attendees the chance to ask questions and input into the services and health and wellbeing offer available in the hub. This will be part of our consultation with the public and will be advertised widely to allow for as much involvement as possible.

Details will be updated and available via our website at: www.shropshiretelfordandwrekin.nhs.uk/get-involved/current-conversations/shrewsbury-health-and-wellbeing-hub/

The reason there are six practices that would like to relocate is because each are facing issues that make their future uncertain. These include no space for expansion, facilities that are not fit for purpose, as well as high rent and maintenance rates from private landlords.

The hub would present a viable solution to these issues, plus it would enhance patient care in several different ways. Please see the Case for Change documents on our website for further information: www.shropshiretelfordandwrekin.nhs.uk/get-involved/current-conversations/shrewsbury-health-and-wellbeing-hub/

We value our patients views and understand that concerns are felt by many in relation to these plans. Our engagement and involvement work aims to allay as many fears as possible and to provide patients with the chance to get their questions answered or to raise any issues they may have with the proposals and to input into the services offered by the hub. All feedback is then relayed to our programme team, working on developing the proposals, for consideration.

No - the work we are currently undertaking is to scope out how the hub might work for patients and whether the proposals present a viable solution to the problems we are facing in general practice in Shrewsbury. Our options appraisal process will help us to determine possible scenarios for the development, a process that has been informed by our engagement activity. The scenarios will then form part of the consultation with the public which will be advertised widely and available at our website.

Yes - our programme team is working closely with partners and key stakeholders in the development of the proposals. We are also ensuring that relevant updates are shared on any progress.

We will aim to engage with as many people as possible throughout our engagement exercises and will also take into account those people who do not have access to digital means or those members of the community that we rarely hear from.

We have lots more engagement work to do and we hope to speak with as many people as possible in a number of different and accessible ways. This will include face-to-face meetings, online meetings, attendance at relevant groups within the community as well as over social media platforms.

A local referendum would not be appropriate as a number of factors need to be considered ahead of the final proposal. It is standard practice when making changes to public service to hold a public consultation to consider views and undertake engagement in the lead up to the consultation to inform the final proposals.