Opening hours and Availability
Opening Hours
The Practice is open from Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 6pm. We are closed for all public holidays such as Christmas and Easter. Once every few months, we are closed one afternoon for mandatory training. Please see Practice News for any closure details.
Appointment Availability
Most Practice appointments are offered during opening hours, although no face to face appointments are available during the lunch hour of 1pm to 2pm.
GP & Nurse appointments are also available on some evenings and weekends. This service is for routine appointments only. Please ask at reception for further details. Consultations are strictly by appointment and may be offered between 18:30 – 20:00 during the week and from 08:30 onwards on Saturdays.
How to book?
Call 01630 652158 for all ‘on the day’ appointment enquiries
Complete an online request via our eConsult service
Book Routine GP appointments via Patient Services
Please be aware that the doctors have asked the reception staff to enquire about the nature of your problem in order to signpost you to the most appropriate type of clinician and appointment.
You will be offered one of the following appointments:
- A routine appointment with a Clinical Pharmacist, Physician Associate, First Contact Practitioner, Mental Health OT, Doctor, Advanced Practitioner, Social Prescriber, Nurse, or Healthcare Assistant up to 4 weeks ahead
- An emergency appointment with an Urgent Care Clinician. Please note, these appointments are for ONE PROBLEM ONLY.
- A same day appointment if you feel that your symptoms cannot wait until the next routine appointment. You will be added to the Book & Wait list. You will be seen in order of clinical priority by one of the Urgent Care Clinicians working that day. These appointments are for ONE PROBLEM ONLY. When attending a Book and Wait appointment, the receptionist will give you a time slot by which you must have arrived and booked in for.
- Home visits can be requested as normal, but a visit cannot be guaranteed by the receptionist. Where possible, requests should be made before 10.30am
Routine Appointments
You may book a routine or non-urgent appointment to see a GP, Nurse, or other clinician by telephoning 01630 652158 during surgery hours or asking at the reception desk. Routine GP Appointments are also available to book via your Patient Services online account or via our online eConsult service.
Priority will always be given to sick children under three and patients over the age of seventy-five. Clinicians are always made aware by a prompt on their screens if a sick and distressed baby is brought into the surgery.
Patients who have not been seen at the practice for 3 years, and are aged between 16 and 75, may request a routine consultation during surgery hours. Where a consultation is provided under this arrangement, enquiries will be made and examinations carried out as appear appropriate in the circumstances.
Patients over 75 who have not been seen at the practice for 12 months may also request a consultation as above. Where it is considered inappropriate for the patient to attend the practice owing to their medical condition, this consultation can take place in the patient’s home.
Home Visits
A patient is considered ‘housebound’ if confined to one room of house by nature of illness often with carers attending numerous times throughout the day.
The General rule is that if a patient is fit enough to visit an optician, dentist, friend, relative, do their own shopping or attend the hairdresser, they can come to surgery.
Please note lack of transport is not a reason for a home visit request and the GP will decide if a home visit is required based on medical need.
Home Visits are only available for patients who are housebound because of illness or disability.
How to request a home visit
If requesting a home visit please call before 10.30am, the reception staff will ask you for a phone number and details of your request.
It is very important that you give the receptionist a brief and specific reason for the home visit request.
Your home visit request will be considered and appropriate advice and/or a home visit/remote consultation will be organised in a time frame suitable to the medical need.
Please note that home visit requests will be prioritised based on medical need and there are often multiple home visit requests so an exact time for a home visit cannot be given.
If a home visit is considered appropriate you will be visited by a Clinician not necessarily a GP.
Telephone Appointments (Routine)
Requesting to Speak to a Doctor
If you need to speak to a doctor on the telephone, your request will be put on the Doctor’s screen by the receptionists, along with a brief description of your reason for a phone consultation. The doctor will ring you back after his or her surgery, or after they have been on their visits.
No specific time can be given. If you are out when the doctor telephones you, they will make a note that they were unable to contact you and may or may not ring again that day.
Please note you may see a ‘time slot’ on your online account, this is a placeholder for our appointment system only and not an indication of the time a clinician will call.
Urgent and Emergency Appointments – Please call 01630 652158
The Practice has taken on board comments from our patients and Patient Group. As a result, we introduced some changes to our appointment system from April 2023
The following urgent or emergency appointments will be offered:
1) An appointment with a nurse in the Minor Illness Clinic (For anyone with minor ailments such as a sore throat or chest infection) – see below. These appointments are primarily carried out by a phone call, but you will be seen if the nurse’s assessment deems it necessary.
2) An emergency appointment, if you feel that your symptoms cannot wait for a routine appointment. You may be asked to come to the Practice by a specific time, to the ‘book and wait’ clinic, to discuss a single problem only. You will be seen by one of the Urgent Care Clinicians working that day.
3) A telephone appointment with an Urgent Care Practitioner, either on the day or routinely.
4) Home Visits: We encourage patients to come to the surgery, where we have the proper equipment and facilities available. We do appreciate this is not always possible. In this respect, if you do need a home visit, you can help us by calling reception before 10:30. A visit cannot be guaranteed by the receptionist, as a doctor will telephone you to carry out an assessment with you.
5) You may be sign-posted to a local pharmacy for treatment of minor ailments and self-care advice
6) You may be offered an appointment with another health care professional who is better placed to deal with your request. For example, one of our Pharmacy Team or our Cancer Care Coordinator.
MINOR ILLNESS NURSE appointments are available to book on the day for our minor illness clinic. This is a nurse run clinic where patients who have minor illnesses can be treated. Patients with the following conditions may request to speak to the minor illness nurse instead of going through the Emergency Appointments/Book & Wait system.
Minor Illnesses include (not an exhaustive list):
- Chest & throat infections
- Ear discharge or infection
- Fevers
- Infected boils or bites
- Urinary Tract infections (please provide a urine sample when attending your appointment)
- Sinusitis
- Styes
- Thrush or vaginal discharge
We appreciate that it is not always easy to give details to a receptionist who is not medically qualified. All our team adhere to a strict protocol that is designed to help you receive treatment from the most appropriate clinician.
eConsult – Contact us online for health care advice, support or administrative help
eConsult is free to use for NHS patients. Use eConsult to ask your GP surgery about your health symptoms, conditions, or treatment. You can even request things like sick notes and GP letters. eConsult requests can be made throughout the week from any device with access to the internet.
- Find your symptom, condition, or request – You may be guided to self-help resources.
- Fill out a quick form.
- The practice responds with advice, a prescription, an appointment, or other appropriate response.
Online Appointment System: Patient Services
Please see our dedicated online services page for guidance on registering. Online bookings are available for routine GP appointments and clinics.
Patient Services
Page last reviewed: 15 August 2024