Practice Update 28th January 2026
We recently contacted you regarding an update on the planned contractual changes relating to Martock Surgery and South Petherton Medical Centre and the other surgeries within the South Somerset West Primary Care Network (Buttercross Health Centre & Ilchester Surgery, Crewkerne Health Centre & West One Surgery and Hamdon Medical Centre).
Unfortunately, we need to inform you that there will be a further delay to this process, and we are now expecting to complete our plans later in the year.
This is due to unexpected delays in some of our legal processes which are outside of our control. We originally believed that a short delay this month would allow enough time to make these changes, however progress has not been as quick as intended with the external parties involved. The extended delay will not only allow these necessary changes to occur but will provide our teams additional time to continue to build relationships, develop roles, and support the programmes of work that are already underway to improve patient care and services.
We are sorry for any confusion or inconvenience this has caused. Our staff are equally disappointed as they have put a huge amount of work into making these changes occur.
We will update patients closer to the change as soon as details are confirmed. In the meantime, please be assured that Martock Surgery and South Petherton Medical Centre will continue to run as normal and you should continue to contact us as you normally would. Specifically, our online consultation system Anima is open as normal (within core hours) and prescription ordering is unaffected.
More information:
Kerry White, Managing Director for Symphony Healthcare Services, said: “ I’d like to reassure all our patients that we remain committed to bringing the practice contracts together within the South Somerset West Primary Care Network. We hope that this change will strengthen how we work, improve staff resilience and, over time, offer greater patient choice and a better overall experience.
“We are making good progress, but the process involves several formal steps, including updates to seven property leases. This means the work is taking longer than we expected. While we finish the remaining steps, patients should continue to contact their registered practice as normal.
“We’re grateful for everyone’s continued support, especially our practice teams who are working closely together to improve patient care as we prepare for the benefits that the merger will bring. We now expect the contract changes to be completed in late spring or early summer, and we’ll keep patients updated as the work progresses.
For more information about the planned changes and previous communications relating to the merger please click on the links below:
Previous Communication
UPDATE Thursday 19th November
Following a busy engagement period with patients and local stakeholders, we are pleased to confirm that earlier this month, the NHS Somerset Integrated Care Board confirmed its approval of the proposal to merge the surgeries and therefore the practices are now working towards combining their contracts in mid January 2026.
This change will enable our teams to access and update one shared patient medical record system to more efficiently care for our population and will bring together all four practices sites (across seven sites) into one primary care contract.
For more information, you can download our latest letter to patients below, as well as our updated Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) document. To access our initial letter informing patients of the proposal, you can click on the heading under "Previous Communication" button below.
As you may already know, Buttercross & Ilchester Surgery, Crewkerne Health Centre: Middle Path & West One, Hamdon Medical Centre and Martock & South Petherton Surgery make up the South Somerset West Primary Care Network. All four practices are also part of the Symphony Healthcare Services (Symphony) group – a large-scale primary care and NHS provider in Somerset, and subsidiary of Somerset NHS Foundation Trust.
Since joining Symphony, the practice teams have been supported to implement new systems and processes to make essential improvements. As a result, all practices have maintained a ‘Good’ rating by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
Over the last year, our practice teams have been working increasingly closer, to provide greater support and resilience to the workforce across the four sites and to develop new innovative ways of working to help improve patient experience. We would now like to share our proposal to combine the contracts of the four practices together.
Further information regarding this proposal can be found below: