Education & Healthcare Facilities
Primary care services provide the first point of contact in the healthcare system, acting as the ‘front door’ of the NHS, and include general practitioners or clinics. GP surgeries in Runnymede are located in the larger towns and villages of the Borough.
Secondary care provides planned or emergency care, usually at hospitals.
Runnymede’s ‘Sustainable Places’ work identifies existing community infrastructure, and accessibility by foot, cycle and public transport for proposed SLAA sites to key amenities including primary schools, secondary schools, GPs, town and secondary centres, and green spaces:
Education & Healthcare Facilities Headlines
- One integrated Care System (Surrey and Sussex)
- Served by several healthcare trusts (e.g. Ashford & St Peters, Royal Surrey, Surrey and Borders Partnership)
- Many community healthcare providers
- 23 state primary schools, 5 state secondary schools
- Several special educational needs schools/units
- One further education facility (Strode’s College) and 1 university (Royal Holloway)
- 7 GP surgeries, and 1 hospital (St Peter’s)
- 5 libraries
- Several community halls, youth centres, day centres, and other valued community facilities
- 16 publicly accessible outdoor sports facilities
- One Surrey Police service
- One Surrey Fire and Rescue service
- Three ‘priority populations’ in Englefield Green West, Addlestone South and Chertsey St Ann’s (those living in key neighbourhoods which experience greater levels of deprivation that lead to poorer health outcomes)
The population attending primary and nursery schools peaked in 2019, and the figures have been dropping since then (primarily due to drop in birth rate since 2013).
Conversely, the population in specialist schools has been increasing, projected to peak in the short-term.
Demand for secondary school places has increased, and is in turn increasing pressure on Surrey’s post-16 education facilities.
Existing infrastructure evidence suggests primary, secondary, acute and mental healthcare infrastructure capacity needs to be improved to accommodate development growth.
The Sustainable Places work shows that in some cases, access to community facilities needs to be improved if development sites are to be considered sustainable.
To date, Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) contributions have been allocated to several projects intended to increase the capacity of local healthcare facilities, including at St Peter’s Hospital, to accommodate residential growth. We continue to work closely with the NHS, the Education Authority and other healthcare and education providers to identify additional proposals to meet needs generated by residential growth in the Runnymede area.
What does this mean for the Local Plan?
Sites should be selected on the basis of their accessibility to local facilities and services; and where access to existing facilities is insufficient, ensure that new development contributes to on-site provision or off-site contributions to deliver new/improved infrastructure in these areas.
A more detailed analysis of existing deficits in the availability of community facilities and public service infrastructure, and additional requirements expected over the plan period, will be prepared in the form of the Infrastructure Needs Assessment and Delivery Plan. This evidence will also inform the facilities and contributions expected from new development, including as part of allocations for major development.
Sources of further baseline information
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