Neighbourhood health and wellbeing services in Shepton Mallet

Background

NHS, council and community partners in Shepton Mallet are working together on plans to develop and deliver neighbourhood health and care services for local people.
The Shepton Health Services Steering Group has been meeting regularly for a number of years to discuss plans to develop ways of delivering them.
Shepton Mallet Community Hospital has deteriorated over the years and is not fit for purpose to continue to provide the current services or additional local community services in the future. The former ward area is unsafe for use, and the 17 inpatient beds are closed on a temporary basis (nine in 2015, eight in 2017).

 

Recent work

In 2024, local partners in Shepton Mallet coproduced a plan for neighbourhood health and wellbeing services. Partners involved in the plan, and the continuing project steering group, are Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, Somerset Council (adult social care), NHS Somerset, Shepton Mallet Town Council, Shepton Mallet Community Hospital League of Friends and Mendip Primary Care Network (including Grove House Surgery).

The group has also been engaging with other colleagues at Somerset Council, local voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector (VCFSE) partners and other elected representatives, including the local MP.

The plan for neighbourhood health and wellbeing services described how:

“There is a broad consensus that to achieve high-quality, sustainable health and social care services that can meet the changing needs of the population, there will need to be a radical shift in the focus of care from hospital to neighbourhood health services, moving towards more preventative models of care.”

The vision set out in the plan document proposed:

• Enabling the wider community to access a wide variety of local integrated services, addressing clinical, wellbeing and health and social care, based on individual needs.

• Developing a Neighbourhood Hub that works alongside the five practices and neighbouring Primary Care Networks (PCN) to support healthy connected communities.

• Working to plan a more integrated care service driven by community and population health needs and move our service into a future ready position for high quality community-based care.

• Ensuring that statutory and charitable services can work together in the most effective manner.

Services considered included: outpatient clinics, the Urgent Treatment Centre (formerly known as the Minor Injury Unit), the PCN’s complex care hub; district nurses, GP consulting rooms, ambulatory care, therapy services and same day urgent/unplanned care.

Health partners have committed to working together to review evolving local community needs over time to try and ensure services are flexible and can be developed to meet those needs.

PCNs are also successfully implementing pilots for developing services in line with delivering more community-based services – for example, heart failure outpatient clinics at Shepton Mallet Community Hospital and Frome Medical Practice in conjunction with Royal United Hospital, Bath, and supporting a Specialist Dementia Nurse post for two years in partnership with Dementia UK.

Although the Shepton plan was published the year previously, the plan was in line with the Government’s 10 Year Health Plan, published in 2025, which focused on the delivery of three key shifts – moving care from hospital to the community, from sickness to prevention, and from analogue to digital.

On 16 April 2026, NHS England issued Neighbourhood health centre guidance for regions and integrated care boards.

The document sets out how:

“Neighbourhood health is a central pillar of the government’s 10 Year Health Plan and represents one of the most significant shifts in the organisation of health and care services since the creation of integrated care systems. Its purpose is to improve access to general practice, bring care closer to home, reduce unnecessary reliance on hospitals, and support a fundamental shift from reactive treatment to prevention, proactive care and integrated multi-disciplinary working.

“Neighbourhood Health Centres are a key physical and operational tool to support the neighbourhood health model, alongside care delivered in people’s homes, digitally and in general practice, pharmacies and other community settings. They will be the place to go for most health needs in every community. This approach also reflects the government’s wider public service reform principles: shifting from reactive services to prevention, integrating services around people’s lives, and devolving power to local areas in partnership with communities and civil society.”

Current focus

The recent focus has been on finding or creating fit-for-purpose premises to help realise the vision. One of the options being considered is moving services to SHAPE Mendip, which is owned by Somerset Council and some of which is currently unused and mothballed.

The steering group, supported by external consultants and estates colleagues at Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, is exploring different financial models for converting and using the building for health services.

This is a complex piece of work and positive discussions between all parties are continuing. Funding arrangements have not been fully identified at this stage and will need to be secured to allow the project to proceed.

 

Next steps

An agreed estates solution is needed and awaited to move the project to its next stage, which would be further work to develop a business case. It is hoped an agreement will be reached in summer 2026.

This work is being carried out in parallel with wider work to produce a strategic estates review for Somerset, which would cover the county’s approach to developing neighbourhood health centres.