Have your say on how Community Urgent Care Services can be improved

News - 30 May 2018

Barking and Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge Clinical Commissioning Groups have today (29 May 2018) launched a consultation to look at how we can improve the way community urgent care services are accessed locally.
Crowd of people at a public meeting

Community urgent care services provide same day care and advice for people with urgent, but not life threatening, physical and mental health issues. These include our GP out of hours service, our seven GP access hubs and four local walk-in services.

They've spoken extensively to local people and stakeholders over the last three years and their feedback has informed our proposals. Local people tell them they find services confusing and this often means they go to A&E when they could be seen elsewhere. They’ve asked for it to be easier to get advice and get an urgent appointment when they need to be seen.

To help make it easier for people to choose the right service when they have an urgent health need, they are seeking feedback on their proposals to make more urgent appointments bookable in advance by calling NHS 111, as well as the below two options:

  • Option 1: Patients can walk in or book urgent appointments at four Urgent Treatment Centres, at King George Hospital, Queen’s Hospital, Harold Wood Polyclinic and Barking Community Hospital. Bookable appointments available at eight community urgent care service locations, and no walk-in service at Loxford Polyclinic or South Hornchurch Health Centre.
  • Option 2: Patients can walk in or book urgent appointments at two Urgent Treatment Centres, - King George Hospital and Queen’s Hospital. Bookable appointments available at ten community urgent care service locations, and no walk-in service at Harold Wood Polyclinic, Barking Community Hospital, Loxford Polyclinic or South Hornchurch Health Centre.

The consultation is not proposing any changes to emergency care services or changes to the A&E services at any of our local hospitals.
To find out more, please read the consultation document and respond to their questionnaire. These are available on their website:

Find out more
The twelve-week consultation will run until 5pm, 21 August 2018 and they will actively seek feedback from members of the public and stakeholders via an online questionnaire and a series of presentations and public drop-in sessions, details of which will be on their websites.

They are keen to speak to as many people as possible about our proposals. If you’d like them to come and talk to your group or organisation, please get in touch by emailing: haveyoursay.bhr@nhs.net

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