Your local Liberal Democrat councillors have last week held urgent talks with local GPs after a growing number of residents complain about not being able to make an appointment with their GP at Royton.

The meeting was attended by Councillors Howard Sykes and Louie Hamblett on behalf of all six councillors for Shaw and Crompton.

Both had called the meeting in response to mounting concern in the community about access to GP appointments, urgent tests and medications.

Councillor Sykes said: “It is our duty to reflect the views of our residents back to public officials whether they be medical professionals or council officers.  It is quite unacceptable that local people should have to experience access issues to vital services and myself and my colleagues were determined to get to the bottom of what was happening.”

The meeting was attending by Doctors Mohammad, Ahmad, Vance and Kohli.

They explained how they had recently merged two GP Practices into a new one and that had created some unforeseen issues with telephone lines but that this had been exacerbated by the current COVID – 19 situation.

They confirmed that they had worked hard with IT experts over recent weeks to rectify the problems and were now more confident that the situation was getting back to normal but said they encourage people raise any issues they experience in the best way they can.

Dr Mohammad explained: “We also think it quite unacceptable for people not to be able to reach us and we have been working really hard to resolve a number of issues which I believe we are now seeing the end of and we were able to reassure of local elected officials as such.”

“It was a positive and forward-looking meeting,” stated Councillor Sykes.  “Hopefully things will get better soon and we look forward to work with the GPs at this practice in the future.”