The NHS Walk-In Centre Maghull Doesn’t Have

Although retired from active politics these days I did notice some social media comments about the lack of an NHS Walk-In Centre in the town during the recent local elections and thought I’d put together a bit of a potted history of the matter.

Maghull Health Centre in 2019

Back in my time as a local Sefton Councillor (1999 - 2015) and indeed as Leader of the Council (2004 – 2011) considerable efforts were made to try to resolve this problem, not least by my then Council colleague Geoff Howe.

When the concept of NHS Walk-In Centres was established it didn’t take long for the former Litherland Town Hall to be identified for such a Centre and as we all know it’s been there for maybe 20 years now. At the time, an obvious concern was that the public transport links to the Centre, particularly from the East Parishes part of Sefton Borough (Lydiate, Maghull, Aintree & Melling) were, at best, poor. On that basis I made clear that whilst supporting the Litherland Centre I wanted to put on record the need for a similar type facility in Maghull. This would be most likely be achieved by the rebuilding of Maghull Health Centre.

Maghull Health Centre had been constructed around the early 1970’sfollowing the considerable efforts and campaigning of a Maghull-based GP, Dr. Reg Yorke. It’s still, in 2026, very much as it was built at least on the outside, although refurbished a few times inside. The point being that the population in the East Parishes has continued to rise whilst the Health Centre has not moved much with the times so to speak.

The pressure to rebuild this Health Centre has therefore always been there for at least the past 25 years yet all that pressure has failed to produce results. It’s as though it has never been a top priority for NHS planners and even if it was the money has not been there to actually make it happen.

I recall, it must have been around 2010ish, that after more pushing and shoving by Cllr. Geoff Howe and others I got a phone call pretty much out of the blue from a senior officer on Sefton Council who told me that he was now sure the NHS was going to take the project forward. I was utterly delighted but sadly soon very disappointed, frustrated and even being blamed for saying publicly that the battle had been won when in fact the NHS had not pressed the start button or they’d had second thoughts very soon after doing so. I never really got to the bottom of why Sefton Council had been told the project was finally a runner when it wasn’t.

Around a similar time period (2008 – 2010) two other significant building projects were being taken forward in both Maghull and Lydiate. We’d won a very long-running campaign to get a swimming pool/leisure centre built in the area by Sefton Council and it’s presently thriving on KGV Park. However, it’s not as originally conceived. Yes, there was always going to be a gym & swimming pool, but the plans did not include the moving of Maghull Library into it. That only came about because the NHS pulled out of the original scoping for the building. It was to have had an NHS facility within it probably associated with GP’s based there being able to prescribe, where appropriate, fitness classes (swimming and gym) for patients in the very same building. An innovative idea which the likes of Cllr. Geoff Howe and I were only to willing to back but sadly the NHS pulled out. The space that was originally pencilled in for the NHS became available around the very time a condition survey had all but condemned the old Maghull Library building. The rest, as they say, is history.

Along side the Leisure Centre project but quite separate to it Lydiate Parish Council was planning and indeed building its ‘Village Centre’ facility in Lambshear Lane. The then Chairperson of the Council, Dave Russell, was very keen to try to draw the NHS in so that they could deliver some health services from the building. Talks took place but sadly the NHS was unable to take up the offer of the building being partly constructed with them in mind. Yet another lost health opportunity in Lydiate and Maghull.

Personally, I found it hard to build a meaningful relationships with NHS health planners not least due to the ever changing methods of doing business caused by regular reorganisations. Not only that people seemed to move jobs by the minute, a bit like the Police so you had to keep starting all over again.*

It’s all rather a depressing story health-wise from my active campaigning days, although I do realise that others will have been trying to reactivate the NHS Drop-In/Rebuild of Maghull Health Centre project since the likes of Geoff Howe, Dave Russell and I ceased to be local councillors

* It’s worth bearing in mind that at a national and local level we’ve been through quite a number of NHS reorganisations in recent times. Locally, we gained two Primary Care Trusts in Sefton Borough (North & South), then they were merged after a few years into one Sefton Primary care Trust, then we went on to Clinical Commissioning Groups, and well you get my drift…...

 

Just 13% of those voting put an X in the Tory box in Aughton!

I made mention before the English local elections of a reasonably well to do community on my doorstep – Aughton, West Lancashire. To me that community has always been Conservative, at least that is until quite recent times. Indeed, I was once told of a tongue in cheek-type remark along the lines of ‘you used to have to show your Conservative membership card to buy a house there’.

Aughton Landscape

 

You see, I cycle a lot around Aughton and have done so for maybe the past 15 years. When you cycle you notice things. The lack of Conservative posters and stake boards has been an obvious one. I only saw one house with a Tory stake board in this May’s elections.

What I also noticed, in the last election when Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader (2019), was Labour posters on expensive Aughton properties. That would just not have ben allowed when Aughton was true blue. But this year I didn’t spot any Labour posters.*

Back in the 1990’s, when I was a Maghull Town Councillor, I went to a Parish Councils conference in London organised by the National Association of Local Councils (NALC). It seemed to be dominated by Conservatives from the Shires and not really the place for a leftie Liberal like me. But what I recall most about it was actually the train ride home where I found myself sitting by what turned out to be a lady who told me she was a Conservative Councillor on West Lancs Council and an Independent member of Aughton Parish Council. That combination of being party political on one council whilst being independent on another, for the same community, struck me as most odd. She was a nice lady but every inch a Conservative and, of course, I expected nothing less from an Aughton councillor. That was around 30 years ago, for context.

Today, I looked at the election result for the ward that covers Aughton Civil Parish and what seems to be the Holborn area of Ormskirk. The Conservative candidate received just 13% of the votes cast and came 4^th! The winning candidate was from the ‘Our West Lancashire Party’ with 39% of the votes cast.

Would the last Conservative in Aughton please turn out the lights comes to mind, but seriously, this shows how fundamentally our politics has changed even in wealthy communities that were once rock solid Conservative.

The headlines from this May’s English local elections have pretty much all been about the hammering that our governing Labour Party suffered and it was of catastrophic proportions, but the losses the once formidable Conservative Party also suffered are of great significance too.

* I obviously don’t cycle every road in Aughton so I may have missed some political posters, I might add.