Coniston GP search sees Lake District village produce video advert

Federica Bedendo

BBC News, North East and Cumbria

Dan Hunt

Local Democracy Reporting Service

Coniston Parish Council

A promotional video to recruit a new village GP has been shared more than 1,000 times

A rural village “at risk of losing” its GP has got creative in a bid to recruit a new one.

Coniston’s current postholder is due to retire this summer, with a replacement yet to be found.

The parish council teamed up with local film-makers and residents to produce a social media campaign to entice a new doctor to the Lake District village, highlighting its natural beauty, pubs, schools and friendly community.

Chairman Tracy Coward said: “A GP is at the heart of any community, so everyone I asked to get involved was really keen.”

A similar approach worked when the village was looking for a headteacher for its secondary school, she said.

“When we knew we were at risk of losing our GP when our current doctor retires at the end of July, we thought ‘we’ve got to get creative’ and we thought to target social media.”

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The video has been shared more than 1,000 times from the council’s Facebook page alone – more than the number of people living in Coniston, which stood at 845 at the latest count.

Speaking on BBC Radio Cumbria’s Mike Zeller at Breakfast, Coward said: “We’ve got a really strong, vibrant community, but that takes hard work and we all pitch in.”

Dr Katharina Frey and Dr Ahmed Abbas, who run Coniston Village Surgery at Wraysdale House, announced they would hand back their contract to the NHS from 1 August.

The practice said this was due to Dr Frey’s retirement and it being unable to recruit a new partner.

‘Unsuitable building’

A petition has also been launched by Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron, urging the NHS to find a new GP provider for the Cumbrian village, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

The Liberal Democrat MP has also written to the Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB), calling on the body to actively seek a replacement.

Coniston Parish Council

The video features residents talking about Coniston’s appeal

Writing to the ICB chairman Kevin Lavery, Farron said Coniston’s full-time population was “beginning to increase again”.

“It would be a tragedy if – after 170 years of continuous provision of a GP service in the village – Coniston was to lose their GP on our watch,” he added.

Peter Tinson, director of primary and community commissioning at the board, said the current building housing the GP surgery was not fit for purpose and options included finding a new provider to run the practice or asking residents to register elsewhere.

He added: “The current Coniston Village Surgery building is not owned by the NHS and while it has housed GP services in the area for a number of years, it does not meet the requirements we would prefer to use for modern healthcare settings.”

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