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

Health officials, advocates 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 by Don Neame, an NHS Director of Communications. 

Mr Neame said they had spoken to 102 residents at three face-to-face meetings around Thurrock and Healthwatch Thurrock said they had 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, 14% preferred option 2, re-tendering, and 42% were in favour of closing for the hubs.

But Mr Neame 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. I think 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?

“We have a real problem with GP access - I have been trying to get a GP appointment for three days and haven’t been able to get one and there are so many people the same.

“I accept that funding is limited but with the hubs 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. More of a point is did people have the opportunity to respond.”

Thurrock CCG added that extra hours could be added to the existing three weekend hours of the hubs once the walk-in centre closed in April 2016.

Councillor Cherry supported Mr Gupta, adding: “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.