- GP practice
Townfield Doctors Surgery
Report from 15 August 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Date of Assessment: 24/10/2025. Townfield Doctors Surgery is a GP practice and delivers service to 8,400 patients under a PMS contract held with NHS England. The National General Practice Profiles states that the ethnicity of the practice population is 47.2% Asian, 27.2% White, 12.4% Black, 3.6% Mixed and 9.6% Other. Information published by Office for Health Improvement and Disparities shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the fourth decile (4 of 10). The lower the decile, the more deprived the practice population is relative to others. This assessment considered the demographics of the people using the service, the context the service was working within and how this impacted service delivery. Where relevant, further commentary is provided in the quality statements section of this report.
We carried out a focused assessment of Townfield Doctors Surgery to follow up on a breach of Regulation 17 good governance identified at our last assessment. At the last assessment, the practice was in breach of legal regulation because people were not always able to access care and treatment in a timely way. This led to a rating requires improvement for providing responsive services. Therefore, our focus for this assessment was on all the quality statements for the responsive key question. However, after reviewing data whilst planning our site visit, a decision was made to expand the scope of the assessment to also include all the quality statements for the caring key question.
Caring: We found people were treated with kindness and compassion. Staff protected their privacy and dignity. They treated them as individuals and supported their preferences. People had choice in their care and treatment. The service supported staff wellbeing.
Responsive: We found people were involved in decisions about their care. The service provided information people could understand. People knew how to give feedback and were confident the service took it seriously and acted on it. The service was easy to access and worked to eliminate discrimination. People received fair and equal care and treatment. The service worked to reduce health and care inequalities through training and feedback. People were involved in planning their care and understood options around choosing to withdraw or not receive care.
Since the last inspection, the practice had made improvements and is no longer in breach of regulation 17 good governance.
People's experience of this service
Feedback from people who used the service was mixed in terms of the quality of their care and treatment. For example, results from the 2025 National GP Patient Survey (95 responses) showed the practice was performing significantly below average for the healthcare professional listening to them, confidence and trust in the healthcare professional and being involved in decisions about care and treatment. However, July 2025 results for the NHS Friends and Family Test (278 responses) showed 85% of respondents were positive about their overall experience of the service. We spoke to 6 patients on the day of our assessment. Most of these told us they were treated with kindness and empathy. Patients told us that the clinicians varied in terms of listening to them and being caring. Some patients were satisfied with the online triage system whilst others said they needed more support with it. Most patients felt that access and interactions with staff had improved. There was an active Patient Participation Group (PPG) who represented the views of people using the service. Representatives from the PPG described how managers made positive changes because of feedback. We saw from PPG meeting minutes where PPG members suggestions had been noted for action. For example, implementing a notice board in reception providing information on accessing the online triage system, seeking assistance from reception and the complaints process. We noted these had been actioned.