The Clinical Commissioning Group has now clarified that the two Lyme Regis GP Practices will merge from 1st June 2019.

This follows the announcement last November, communicated by letter to all patients at Lyme Regis Medical Centre, by press release, and through a drop-in question-and-answer session, that Virgin Care’s contract to run GP services at LRMC would cease on 31st May 2019.

At the time the CCG promised that more detail on what it called the ’alternative local arrangements’ would follow in due course.

So we now know that from 1st June this year the Medical Centre and the Lyme Bay Medical Practice will join together as a single Practice, led by Dr Forbes Watson. The intention is for GP and nurse services currently provided at LRMC to continue, in the same building. The only significant difference will be that, instead of being employees of Virgin Care, the doctors and nurses will be employed directly by this single local Practice, while the two separate patient lists will become o...

Dorset Police and Crime Commissioner Martyn Underhill has launched a consultation asking for public views on increasing the part of the council tax that funds local police. He is suggesting an extra £2 per month. This follows a government decision to enable Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) to increase their part of the council tax up to a maximum of £24 per year.

Mr Underhill says that he is “immensely frustrated that the financial burden has, once again, been passed to local taxpayers and it is important that members of the public are under no illusion: this is a short-term fix that barely covers the need.”

He adds: “The government’s latest funding settlement does not address the considerable, and mainly unfunded, police pension issue, new training regime, plus inflationary and pay pressures, all of which have been thrust upon national policing. Nor does it reverse the eight years of austerity that have left Dorset Police with the lowest number of officers since 1981.

“Nevertheless,...

The Clinical Commissiong Group has published some Frequently Asked Questions (available here). The Option A referred to in the FAQs is available here.

Back in September LymeForward's Health and Wellbeing Group asked you to contribute to a survey to create invaluable "data" which can be used when needed. The results have now been analysed with the report available here .

The survey was kindly hosted on a goodwill basis by a professional market research company, 'Closer to Customers', who are based in the area, and also managed an almost-identical survey in the Axminster area, through the Patient Participation Group of the Axminster Medical Practice.

It's clearly the week for long-awaited news: Bridget Betts of Dorset Coastal Forun has today received notification from Groundwork UK on behalf of MHCLG to let her know that our Dorset Portfolio project ‘Gateways to Businesses Growth in Dorset’ stage 1 application has been successful and we have been invited to apply to stage 2 Coastal Communities Fund Round 5. Their email also states that ‘On behalf of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Groundwork UK we apologise for the delay communicating our decision to you. We appreciate your patience and will support you to remedy any inconvenience caused to your project plans’. We are also warned " that we need to be aware that stage 2 is very competitive and there is no guarantee of funding as MHCLG are only able to support those applications that demonstrate the strongest fit with our criteria".

A reminder of the local components put forward by the Lyme Regis and Charmouth Coastal Community Team:

a. Interpretation (£80...