A GP surgery has submitted plans to expand its premises with four new consulting rooms to adapt to its growing patient list.

In a planning application to Test Valley Borough Council (TVBC), Charlton Hill Surgery wants to build a single storey front extension, which will expand the surgery’s internal space by 100 sqm.

With the extra room, the practice hopes to enlarge the waiting room, add an administrative office and four new consulting rooms to cater for its 12,400 patients.

Since April last year, 4,769 more patients registered at Andover practices and 38 per cent of them registered in Charlton Hill.

Practice business manager of the Charlton Road site Adrian Wise said: “We are providing the same services in a building that is 20-years-old, for a significantly larger population in the same building.

“The expansion is really to facilitate the number of GPs, so the access to services can be maintained and health care can be improved and expanded.

“We work really hard on our access to services and the only way to do that is have GPs and the practice maintains a lower than average patient list per GP. That is why we need the rooms.”

Charlton Hill Surgery’s number of GP partners grew in October with an additional ninth member to help cater to the increasing patient population which is rising by four per cent a year. 

The plans submitted on Wednesday, 22 November, also look to make changes to the existing building layout such as by converting an original consulting room and examination room into a staff welfare area and nurse store. 

Five new car parking spaces would also be created.

In September St Mary’s GP surgery in Church Close was granted planning approval by TVBC’s Northern Area Planning Committee to expand its premises, which also included plans for four new consultation rooms, extra office space and a bigger waiting area.

Mr Wise said: “Getting planning approval is the easy bit but financing - that is the hard part, my GPs are going to have to take out a mortgage, NHS England don’t provide the funding.

“It could be two years before an expansion could actually take place.”

“The alternative is to open on different hours and sweat the building a bit more. An observer would say the surgery is closed before 8am you could have appointments open before then, but my GPs have a life, they have families.”

To view and comment on the application go to testvalley.gov.uk/planning-and-building/viewplanningapplicationsonline and search using the reference 17/03020/FULLN.