Councillors slammed a ‘lack’ of public consultation after senior health officials confirmed last night Grays walk-in centre is to close.

Health officials, residents and councillors gathered at Thurrock’s Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Meeting at Civic Offices to examine the public consultation.

The consultation, which received 251 written responses out of 1,800 given out, was presented at the meeting by NHS England.

Don Neame said they had spoken to 102 residents at three face-to-face meetings around Thurrock and informed a total of 730 residents about the plans.

Responses to the questionnaire showed 59% of people who responded preferred to keep the centre open, 29% preferred option 2 and 14% were in favour of closing for the hubs.

But NHS England said of the 102 residents they met face-to-face they found a majority of people in favour of closing for the new hubs.

Mr Neame said: “People were concerned about access. One of the reasons people didn’t prefer Option 3 was because they didn’t know what it meant.

“People wanted to know more about the opening hours, the locations. People need more information about the hubs.”

Councillor Yash Gupta slammed the public consultation, saying: “Is that really enough data to come up with such a big decision that’s affecting a lot of peoples’ lives? I have been trying to get a GP appointment for three days, I haven’t been able to get one and I have met so many people with the same problem.

“I accept that funding is limited but with the hubs you can’t just walk in, you have to go through your GP to get an appointment at the hub.”

Mr Neame responded by saying: “250 is not an unreasonable number for a consultation. The point is more did people have the opportunity to respond.”

Mandy Ansell, of Thurrock CCG, added that the four new hubs were set to open up for three hours at first on Saturday and Sunday, with a further three hours to be added once the walk-in centre closed in April 2016.Councillor Cherry joined in the criticism, saying: “I support Councillor Gupta. Grays walk-in centre is already a hub – it’s in the centre of Thurrock with good transport links and many people from around Thurrock work in Grays making it easy to get to.”

Meeting attendees voted all in favour of decommissioning the centre, and Councillor Gupta abstained.

The four hubs are being opened in staggered stages at Neera Medical Centre, Stanford-le- Hope, the Health Centre, in London Road, Tilbury, which have already opened, and a third and fourth hub in Grays and South Ockendon.

The Thurrock Clinical Commissioning Group made the decision to close the centre in May following the public consultation in February and March.