An Andover GP surgery is aiming to alleviate its parking issues by buying offsite parking in the town centre.

The Adelaide Medical Centre, located on Adelaide Road, has purchased six offsite parking spaces for staff near to the surgery in an effort to unblock a planning logjam caused by concerns over what additional spaces would do to local roads by council highways officers.

In an update to patients last week, Philip Heiden, the managing partner of the practice, said: “We have recently purchased six additional car parking spaces offsite but near to the surgery, which we have allocated to our staff in order to free up bays at the practice for patient parking.

“We will be creating two additional spaces onsite by converting a small grassed area into parking bays. We will stagger appointment times and clinics to spread activity across the working day rather than have peak times.

“Further to this, we will be installing a bike shed and have encouraged staff to travel to work by other means.”

Plans had been submitted in September for new spaces, and electric charging points, with spaces specifically reserved for doctors with an additional six spaces overall.

However, the addition of new spaces to the west of the centre, with a new access onto Adelaide Road, caused concern among council officers over the impacts on traffic and parking, with two on-street bays being lost under the plans.

In March, Philip told the Advertiser that the practice was hoping to reach a consensus with planning officers, saying: “We’re trying to think of how we can get around those concerns. They raised concerns for residents parking as well, but what permit parking do they want? If it’s afternoon and weekends, then we’re shut.”

However, the surgery has now decided to look elsewhere for parking, with other plans to improve patient travel to the centre in the pipeline.