100's of new houses planned for Melksham need more healthcare.

After learning about hundreds of new houses now being planned by developers in Melksham and surrounding villages, the Melksham Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group has invited senior officers from Wiltshire’ s Clinical Commissioning Group to discuss the CCG’s future plans for providing services to meet the healthcare needs of the area’s rapidly growing population.

The meeting will take place on Wednesday 10th February in the offices of Melksham Without Parish Council in the Market Place, starting at 2.30pm.

The Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group has become aware that the number of houses contained in developer planning applications currently in the pipeline or going to appeal already exceed the target number of houses previously anticipated for the Melksham area in Wiltshire Council’s housing strategy. This is even before all the possible sites identified in Wiltshire Council’s Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment document and other longer term development plans that we know about are taken into account.

If these plans are approved or appeals succeed, the more houses will place even more demands on infrastructure provision – including health and care services”

Local GPs and other NHS services are working hard and face huge pressures to provide the excellent healthcare to local residents, but perhaps healthcare planners may be less clear about the increasing pressures likely to arise from developer proposals for new housing over the next decade in the Melksham area.”

We need to make sure that future service planning takes account of these increased demands and that land is available locally to provide all new facilities that will be needed in the future.

The aim of our meeting is to help get a better understanding of these future health-related land use requirements for inclusion in the statutory Melksham Neighbourhood Plan.

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