Aims to set up a Primary Care Trust to improve Health and health care for Colchester have won the support of councillors.

But members at a recent meeting of housing, community safety and policy panel said they wanted more information about a proposed pilot scheme to improve the health of Colchester residents which could trim £4 million off health care costs.

Sites being considered for the Colchester Health Initiative's one-stop clinic include St Mary's Hospital, Essex County Hospital, a site next to Colchester General Hospital and a green field site.

Brendan Osborne, chief executive of Colchester Primary Care Group told councillors the Trust's aim was to provide patient centred integrated health care and to make decisions locally.

It would also target ways of reducing long-term serious mental illness, coronary heart disease and cancer and work to try and treat illness so that people can be kept out of hospital where appropriate.

Councillors said they were concerned the scheme might inherit financial difficulties. Mr Osborne said work was going on to avoid that.

But they needed more information about plans to set up the Colchester Health Initiative before they were prepared to pass on their views to the Cabinet.

The scheme would be a collaboration between the Colchester Primary Care Group if it became a Trust, Essex Rivers Health NHS Healthcare Trust and the private company Primary Care Advisory (PCA).

The pilot aims to be up and running by April 2001 with a clinic offering one-stop health care open by late 2001.

Dr Ian Wiles, a GP on secondment to PCA said: "We have said that this pilot will not make any money. We would like to recoup our spending but we will not make any money."

Elizabeth Blundell (Con, West Bergholt and Eight Ash Green) said: "I am very concerned that 58 per cent of GPs are against it."

Councillors decided to defer a decision and asked for more information and for the consultation deadline to be extended from September to October.

The public can hear about the plans at a public meeting at Colchester Town Hall on Tuesday, September 5, at Myland Hall Education Centre at St Helena Hospice on Thursday, September 21 and again at Colchester Town Hall on Thursday October 5.

All meetings start at 7pm.

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.