We understand that after reading the stories covered in the Wiltshire Times on August 4, people might have concerns about health services in Wiltshire. The Strategic Outline Case, presented in public on July 25, can be found by following this link on our website: www.wiltshireccg.nhs.uk/Strategic-outline-case. We urge anyone who is interestedto read it.
We do not make any assumption about the location of new health facilities in Wiltshire. The truth of the matter is that the proposals we set out will increase the type of outpatient treatments people will be able to receive in their community, so that they don’t have to travel to one of the district hospitals in Bath, Salisbury or Swindon.
This Strategic Outline Case is only the first piece of the jigsaw for Wiltshire. It explains why we need to change the way health services are delivered in our county, and how we think we might do that. 
It is well publicised that the NHS faces a financial, workforce and service crisis. This is a national issue; Mr Cottle is right to point out that the Bradford on Avon Health Centre is ‘working full to capacity.’ That is true of the vast majority of GP practices and health centres in Wiltshire. 
It’s not fair to patients, staff or clinicians, and it’s certainly not the right way of working when we know the Wiltshire population is increasing. How we provide healthcare must evolve, fast, in Wiltshire as well as the rest of the country.
We have reached our conclusions about the type of health facilities we need with the help and insight of GPs, healthcare practitioners and community teams (including from the Bradford on Avon And Melksham Healthcare Partnership), because they are the people who understand what works for their patients better than anyone else.
 National policy - The NHS Five Year Forward View: Next Steps - sets out the expected direction for us to follow.
As a starting point, we have secured millions of pounds of additional funding to be able to plan vital improvements to primary care services in Trowbridge and Devizes.
The next stage will be for further development work – and this is the point at which we will start to look at all the available options for where services might be located across the whole of Wiltshire, so that the same services are accessible to everyone, equally.
 Once we have done this we will move to a full public engagement programme. We can only make the necessary improvements with the support of the people of Wiltshire.
Linda Prosser, Interim chief officer
NHS Wiltshire CCG
Dr Peter Jenkins, Chairman 
NHS Wiltshire CCG