WORK is due to start next month on a new £1.5m medical centre at Wymondham to help cater for the town's rapidly expanding population. The development will provide improved facilities for staffand patients at the existing Windmill Surgery - currently based in a cramped converted bungalow in Melton Road, Wymondham.

WORK is due to start next month on a new £1.5m medical centre at Wymondham to help cater for the town's rapidly expanding population.

The development will provide improved facilities for staff

and patients at the existing Windmill Surgery - currently based in a cramped converted bungalow in Melton Road, Wymondham.

The practice had been looking for a suitable alternative site for several years to enable it to expand, and is relocating to land bordered by Friarscroft and Old London Road.

Planning consent was granted for the development in January this year, the scheme having also been given the go-ahead

by Norfolk Primary Care

Trust.

News that construction is imminent has been welcomed by local district councillor Martin Wynne, who was instrumental in finding the

site which was jointly owned

by the town and district councils.

“I am absolutely delighted that we have got to this position. It has been a long and arduous route and this is good news for the town,” he said.

“The new building will be a vast improvement in terms of size, the number of doctors who will be employed and the number of patients that can be treated, together with additional medical facilities.”

Mr Wynne said that there

are concerns within the community that the existing infrastructure cannot keep pace with the demands of the growing population, adding: “This is going to help to

meet that lack of infrastructure with regards to medical facilities.”

Colin Foulger, the practice manager, said the town's other doctor's surgery is full to capacity with 18,000 patients. Developers are seeking to build more than 3,000 homes in Wymondham in coming years, and a new medical centre is urgently needed.

“It will give us a better profile and we will be more accessible to the centre of Wymondham, and not just the one side as we are now. We are in a 1950s bungalow and are at capacity; some days of the week staff

have to double up in their accommodation,” he added.

The new surgery is being developed in conjunction with the practice's project partner MedCentres.

Mr Foulger said construction is expected to take nine months and it is hoped the building will open in next spring.