The organisation responsible for GP services has pledged to learn lessons after a surgery responsible for the care of 14,000 patients was temporarily closed last week.

Following the "enormously regrettable" closure of Shakespeare Road Medical Practice, formerly known as Bermuda and Marlowe, Dr Matt Nisbet has pledged that the Hampshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) will review the situation and how it could be managed better if it arises again.

He stressed that the surgery, responsible for the care of 14,000 patients in the Popley area, was back to "business as normal" and the planned takeover was not in danger.

The CCG, who are responsible for organising GP services across the county, came under fire from patients and councillors last week after apparent confusion over the sudden 24-hour closure.

Patients were told to call 111 whilst the surgery was closed, with the call handlers apparently unaware of the closure until a number of hours later.

Additionally, no statement was issued by the CCG until Wednesday evening.

It led to several rumours spreading on social media groups, without any statement explaining the real reasons behind the closure.

Now, in an exclusive interview with The Gazette, Dr Nisbet, who is associate clinical director of the organisation, has pledged to learn lessons about how the communication of the closure was handled.

"The temporary closure was something we found out about at very short notice, and was something decided at very short notice," he said.

"We did have a conversation about how to handle the communication and the decision we made was rather than start sending messages out which might spread panic amongst 14,000 patients, we would wait for a few hours until we hand a clear message about what was going to happen moving forwards.

"One of things we are going to do is review what has happened and what lessons we can learn from what happened last week. If there are lessons to be learnt from communication we are open to those."

The CCG's senior communications and engagement manager, Nick Brooks, added: "Given that it was a situation that had just arisen and that was highly likely to change very soon, the decision you are having to make is is it right to tell everyone now and broadcast something out now, fully in the knowledge that you might have to be broadcasting something different in a few hours, and all the problems with confusion that would cause.

"But conscious that if you don’t tell people things as soon as you can, that will also cause concern for people.

"I can understand they might have criticisms of it. But I can understand that other people would have different criticisms if we’d done it differently as well.

"It was about accepting that there was no perfect solution that we were in. I am open to that conversation and we do need to have a review about that, but it was not a simple or straight-forward solution.

"There clearly was a period last week where people were wondering what is going on and not feeling reassured. I would hope that some of that has been addressed now."

It also comes after the town's MP, Maria Miller, called for a meeting with CCG bosses about how to manage the situation better in the future.

"We meet regularly with Maria Miller and a range of councillors and talk to them on arranged healthcare related issues, we’re always happy to hear their views just the same as we’re always happy to hear views from local residents," Dr Nisbet added.

"We have had some quite constructive conversations with the councillors who are all very reassured."

The closure was last week blamed on a build-up of short-term pressure connected with the takeover.

But Dr Nisbet elaborated on this, saying: "Any merger of this scale is enormously complex, it would be surprising if there weren’t bumps in the road and glitches.

"NHS staff everywhere are under a great deal of pressure, as well as providing the normal services that we all rely on, we’re trying to catch up on things put off from last year and running the biggest vaccination programme the country has ever seen.

"It was a cumulative pressure of all of those things, that led to Bramblys Grange feeling that the right thing for them to do was to pause, take stock and to plan what they were going to do moving forward to improve things for the patients of Popley."