THE future of Bury’s walk-in centres and urgent care provision was unsurprisingly the main issue on the lips of members of the public who attended Wednesday’s Bury Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) board meeting.

As with all CCG board meetings, there was an opportunity for members of the public to ask the health chiefs questions or raise matters which they were concerned about.

And after several township forum meetings in the borough involving heated exchanges between the public and CCG representatives, it was always likely the issue would be brought up again.

Sue Arnall, aged 71, from Bury, said she was concerned that if Bury’s two walk-in centres – Bury Urgent Treatment Centre and Prestwich Walk-in Centre – closed down, it would increase the number of people attending Fairfield General Hospital, which she said was already too busy.

“I live very near the hospital and everyday there are always traffic jams going into the hospital,” she said.

“I can’t see how closing the walk-in centre is in any way going to alleviate this; surely it will just make things worse?”

In response, Dr Kiran Patel, chair and clinical lead of Bury CCG, said the plans to improve the 111 telephone triage service aims to deal with this.

Under the CCG’s plans for a restructure of urgent care provision in the borough, patients would first call 111 instead of visiting the walk-in centres and on the phone they could be directed to the right service they require.

Dr Patel said many people who currently use the walk-in centres are redirected to other places for treatment, and suggested using the 111 line as a first port of call would get around this problem.

He added: “Many people who use the walk-in centres or go to A&E may well have been better going to a different treatment centre.

“This is about making sure we direct people to the right service in the first instance.”