Your local Liberal Democrat councillors have been concerned building work for the new health centre has appeared to stop.  We are pleased to report this will be only a short delay and serious construction works will start shortly.

Below is the text of recent correspondence from NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care about the development and following a meeting with the site manager of the Shaw development.

Shaw Crompton GP Practice Development

I wanted to write to you formally to express my sincere gratitude for the work you have done in recent days with local businesses and residents in and around the Shaw Crompton GP Practice development.

Although the development is now in the hands of the third-party developer and the GP Practices concerned, my team and I remain involved in a slightly different way having secured the capital to develop the scheme.  That said I am aware of the concerns from local businesses about access impinging their commercial enterprises, so I am grateful for you meeting with the developer last week to help clarify matters for your residents and business owners.  I am pleased that there is now some common agreement that there should be no minimal access issues during the build process.

More generally, I thought it would be worthwhile clarifying the overall programme.  First and foremost, I continue to assert that this programme will happen.  We secured the capital and remain committed to that position.  

The only things that could now in effect materially change that are a withdrawal by the GP Practices, but that is unlikely as the building they currently occupy is at the end of its life; or withdrawal of the capital but that would be a national decision by Government which is also extremely unlikely as the funding has been committed to the developer now.

It is worth me pointing out that the scheme is delayed by around four to six weeks.  That is not uncommon in building programmes of this nature.  However, that delay is not consequent to anything other than complexity of building processes. In simple terms two issues have slowed matters down temporarily.

Firstly, the developers have identified some unforeseen contamination issues around oil and gas.  That has necessitated some remedial works to be undertaken to deal with those issues.  Secondly, some unforeseen costs around the sub-station have had to be dealt with but have taken quite a bit longer than we had anticipated in the overall programme plan.  I believe that this matter is now resolved.

In conclusion the scheme is slightly delayed by a small number of weeks, but I would expect visible activity will commence on site and people will be able to see it in the very near future i.e. once the contamination issues have been resolved to the Council inspector’s satisfaction.