Doctors at the St. Andrew’s Medical Centre in Southborough have confirmed they will be leaving their building at the end of August to move into “modular” buildings on the Yew Tree Road Car Park.

An earlier scheme to move first to Pinewood Court has been abandoned.

The doctors’ statement says:  “We can now confirm that we will be leaving our premises at Pinewood Gardens after the close of evening surgery on Friday 26th August 2016.”

“Our new site will be in Yew Tree Road car park and we are working hard to achieve an opening date of Tuesday 30th August, this date will be confirmed as soon as possible.”

“With 6 Weeks to go the new building has been commissioned, it is a single storey modular build commonly used within the NHS for clinical services and is built to exceed all NHS premises requirements. The new building offers the same number of consultation and treatment rooms ensuring our level of service continues.”

It seems converting half the Yew Tree Road car park into a doctors’ surgery did not need planning permission, so one disruptive move into Pinewood Court has been avoided.

But mystery still surrounds the issue of why the surgery has to move out of its building in Pinewood Gardens, which was purpose built in the 1980s.

It seems two retired doctors who own the current surgery site had wanted the current doctors (the St Andrew’s Partnership) to sign a new 15-year lease, but the current doctors had failed to negotiate about terms, amid the prospect of moving into a new building in the planned Southborough Hub.

One of the owners responsible for serving a “notice to quit” for August 31st said the order was served merely to bring the matter to a head.  Dr Paul Bowden told the Courier:  “The option of a lease is still available and welcome to the owners but the Partnership has, once again, failed to communicate.”

The Southborough News blog has still not been able to obtain any further clarification about why 8,000 patients and staff at the doctors’ surgery are having to uproot themselves,  presumably at extra expense to the the NHS, when the site’s owners apparently want the surgery to stay in its current building at Pinewood Gardens.