Six Plaid Cymru politicians want the health board to explain why it now backs merging Pontyates’s GP surgery with Kidwelly, nine months after its own panel wanted the surgery’s patients sent elsewhere.
Plaid Cymru’s three Senedd Members for Sir Gaerfyrddin, Cefin Campbell, Nerys Evans and Adam Price, have written to the chief executive of Hywel Dda University Health Board.
County councillors Alex Evans, Meinir James and Tyssul Evans have signed the letter too.
One of their questions goes straight to the U-turn: “What has changed since January that has led the Health Board to identify a merger as its preferred option?”
A merger with Kidwelly was passed over in January
In January, the health board’s Vacant Practice Panel recommended dispersing all 4,300 of the surgery’s patients to other practices.
The panel had looked at a merger with Kidwelly’s Meddygfa Minafon. It said a 13,000-patient practice spread across several sites would bring its own problems.
The board paper also described the Pontyates building as too small and in a flood zone, with a lease running out in October 2026.
This month, after nobody bid to run the surgery, the panel recommended merging it with Minafon, with Pontyates kept open as a branch.
‘Cautiously optimistic’, but patients want answers
The politicians say they are “cautiously optimistic” about the plan. They say a surgery in the village matters most to “older and more vulnerable patients who may struggle to travel elsewhere”.
“For local people, the question is not simply whether the surgery remains open, but what level of service they can expect to access in the future,” they wrote.
They want to know whether full details of the merger will be published before patients are asked for their views, and whether residents will get enough chances to give them face to face.
They also ask what plans there are to recruit GPs and clinical staff for a merged practice, whether every service at Meddygfa’r Sarn would stay in Pontyates, and when any merger would happen.
Patients can have their say from 2 November
The health board’s engagement on the plan runs from Monday 2 November to Sunday 29 November. A report is due to go to the board early in 2027, with any new arrangement starting from 1 April 2027.
When it announced the plan, the board’s chief operating officer, Andrew Carruthers, said: “No final decision has been made.”
He said that if the merger goes ahead, staffing, services and capacity across the combined practice “will be assessed and developed to ensure patients continue to have access to safe and effective GP services”.
The politicians want their answers “made publicly available ahead of the engagement process wherever possible”.
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