New Mickleover GP surgery and school delayed so more homes can be built first

The plans will see 1,100 new homes built on farmland on the edge of Mickleover
-Credit: (Image: Reach Publishing Services Limited)


A new doctor’s surgery will be built in a Derby suburb but it could be delayed, along with plans for a new school, so the developer can build more houses first. The developers behind the 1,100-home New House Farm estate in Mickleover have applied to South Derbyshire District Council make several changes to their planning application, which was approved in 2018.

Bloor Homes and Taylor Wimpey have shared their commitment to providing space for a healthcare facility on the site, with the NHS Derby and Derbyshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) agreeing to launch a branch surgery on the plot. Plans for the new surgery itself would be applied for separately, with the ICB agreeing designs with the council.

The developers had agreed to build the new surgery by the time they had built and occupied 250 houses, but they now want to be able to occupy 450 houses before the new facility is up and running. They say this would push the planned new surgery back from having to be built by this October, to December 2026, or mean they have to stop people moving onto the site.

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This would delay the planned scheme, for which there is no standalone planning application or any construction started on site, by more than two years. In October last year, Clive Newman, director of GP development at the ICB, had said negotiations to set up a GP branch surgery on the site had been moving forward, with a practice keen on expanding with an additional location.

Last year the ICB had also confirmed that plans for a surgery on the Hackwood Farm site, also in Mickleover, had been scrapped, with another site being looked at instead – New House Farm. It has said the South Derbyshire area around Derby is its county-wide priority area for new health services and expansions.

Residents and councillors have long called for more healthcare facilities in Mickleover, claiming the two sites at Mickleover Medical Centre and Mickleover Surgery were oversubscribed. The Local Democracy Reporting Service has been told by residents that they have to queue outside from 7am in order to get appointments at the surgery, claiming they are unable to get through to staff on the phone.

As of December 2022, Mickleover Medical Centre had 12,691 patients and six doctors, meaning an average of 2,115 patients per doctor. Mickleover Surgery had 6,183 patients and four doctors, giving an average of 1,546 patients per GP. Meanwhile, a primary school will be built as part of the development, to be constructed by the Department of Education and the Derby Diocesan Academies Trust under the Free Schools programme on behalf of Derbyshire County Council.

A planning application for this primary school is due this autumn, the district council says. The developer had agreed to ensure a primary school is built by the time it has built and occupied 400 houses, and that it could not build or occupy further homes until this is achieved.

However, it has now applied to delay this until it has built and occupied 500 homes. The developer aims to have 450 homes occupied by December 2026, so 500 homes would not be occupied until at least 2027.

In August, Jenny Webster, head of development in children’s services at Derbyshire County Council said children on the New House Farm site may have to be taught at a temporary site for two years due to delays to the school on the site. She said the school had been planned to open from September 2025 but that could now be delayed to September 2027 in a “worst-case scenario” due to ongoing delays over transferring the land from the developers to the council.

Ms Webster had told the August district council meeting: “The New House Farm project is proving problematic in terms of securing land from the developers for the school. We are aiming to have the school open by September 2027, subject to the planning process. We thought it would be 2025 so now we have got quite a problem of trying to work out where to put the children.

“We have got our temporary school accommodation on the Chellaston Fields site which we can use while the new premises is being built, but we recognise it is not ideal for children who are starting school in a temporary building but at least we can use the facilities that we have got.” In 2023, the council spent £2.2 million on a temporary flat-pack “school on wheels”, containing five classrooms, housed in the Chellaston Fields school grounds, to act as temporary accommodation for the Clover Leys Spencer Academy, in Boulton Moor, which was without a home for four years due to similar legal delays over land access.

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