Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) were set up by the Government to put local medical professionals in charge of organising NHS services for patients.
Rob Loughenbury writes "Recently I met up with a senior officer of the Chorley and South Ribble Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), to get the latest news from the organisation and hear about the local health issues it is currently tackling. Topics for discussion included the new models of urgent care services and the future of general medical services in the area.
One point of huge interest to me that arose from our discussions is that CCGs currently do not have a capital budget, so they cannot plan to build new premises in areas where the population is growing, such as in Chorley.
One way to deal with this could be for planning authorities (in our case Chorley Borough Council) to get tougher on developers about providing space for primary care in the community. Private investment in the Borough is especially welcome when significant investment in vital service infrastructure is part of the deal and we cannot afford to be shy about saying this to the big developers."