Patients in Kidwelly and Trimsaran have as much riding on the Meddygfa’r Sarn merger as anyone in Pontyates. That is the warning from the campaigners who have spent the year fighting for the village surgery.
The Save Sarn Surgery Community Working Group says adding Sarn’s roughly 4,350 patients to Meddygfa Minafon’s list does not make the demand for appointments go away. Its question is who absorbs it.
Under Hywel Dda University Health Board’s proposal, Sarn would open 9am to 3pm on weekdays, with urgent appointments after that seen in Kidwelly. Minafon would keep its 8am to 6.30pm day and its Trimsaran branch would stay open 9am to 4pm, with staff shared across all three.
The board calls that a more sustainable arrangement. The group says it leaves “major unanswered questions” for all three surgeries, not one.
Five questions for Hywel Dda, starting with Minafon’s waiting times
Can Minafon take on thousands more patients without longer waits, the group asks. When the area’s county councillors last described the Kidwelly practice, in October, it had more than 8,500 patients and one permanent GP.
It wants to know whether sharing staff across three sites would leave Sarn and Trimsaran with fewer clinicians on any given day, and what happens to a Pontyates patient who needs to be seen after 3pm but cannot get to Kidwelly.
How older and less mobile patients would reach appointments is on the list, and so is a guarantee: what stops Sarn’s hours being cut again once the merger is through? Six Plaid Cymru politicians who wrote to the board last month asked for the same kind of detail.
The group wants the board to show “with clear evidence” how the model would work day to day, because in its words “keeping the doors open is not enough” and communities need “properly staffed, accessible and reliable GP services”.
It put the point more bluntly in a message to residents: “This is no longer just about Sarn Surgery.” The board, it said, should explain how the proposal protects all three communities, “not simply move the pressure from one surgery to another”.
What the board has said, and the drop-in on 20 November
Hywel Dda says no decision has been made and that it wants to hear from patients of both practices before one is. Andrew Carruthers, its chief operating officer, said on Monday the board had “heard clearly how important it is to local people that GP services continue to be available in Pontyates”.
When it announced the merger plan in October, he said staffing, services and capacity across the combined practice would be assessed “to ensure patients continue to have access to safe and effective GP services”. A report is due to go to the board in January, with any change from 1 April 2027.
The campaigners’ advice is to turn up. The board’s drop-in is at Pontyates Welfare Hall on Heol y Meinciau on Friday 20 November, any time between 1.30pm and 6.30pm, and there is an online session at 6.30pm on Tuesday 24 November, with the link from hyweldda.engagement@wales.nhs.uk.
The questionnaire is on the board’s engagement website, on paper at all three surgeries, by email to ask.hdd@wales.nhs.uk or by phone on 0300 303 8322, option 5. Engagement closes on Sunday 29 November.
The group’s closing line to its neighbours: “Please don’t leave it to someone else to speak up.”
The merger plan came after nobody bid to run Sarn when the contract went out to tender in July. That was nine months after the board’s own panel had recommended closing the surgery and dispersing its patients, and the same campaign group had suggested joint working with Kidwelly’s surgery back in the spring, provided a GP service stayed in the village.
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