Beckington Family Practice lies on St. Luke’s Road in the historic village of Beckington, located a few miles north of Frome and a short distance from the Wiltshire border.
The practice was one of 16 to benefit from a share of £1.14m from the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) in the spring of 2025, with building work finishing in March on one new clinical room and an expanded reception area and dispensary.
The practice’s catchment area includes the entirety of Frome, including the site of the proposed Selwood Garden Community of 1,700 homes which was approved by the government in early-April.
Additional NHS funding has been secured for the practice through two recently approved housing developments, which will help to offset the impact of these and other new homes being built in the area.
Doctors’ surgeries typically receive funding from housing developers through two means: Section 106 agreements (which cover the land within the development site and the immediate proximity) and the community infrastructure levy (which allows funds from different sites to be pooled to deliver more significant upgrades).
CIL is not charged within the former Mendip area, which includes Beckington – leaving the village reliant on Section 106 agreements with individual developers – with NHS Somerset calculating the appropriate contributions on a per capita basis.
Furthermore, Section 106 funding can only be used for capital work (such as building a new surgery or extending the existing one), rather than paying salaries or covering running costs.
DHSC’s national utilisation and modernisation fund provided a share of £102m nationwide for small-scale capital works, allowing more appointments to be delivered in the short-term ahead of more major improvements.
A spokesperson for NHS Somerset said: “These projects are small in scale and have centred around internal reconfiguration and adaptation of existing accommodation to create additional clinical areas for the treatment of patients, rather than the physical expansion or extension of GP practice accommodation.”
Proposed access to 35 homes on Trowbridge Road in Beckington (Image: Daniel Mumby)
Two housing developments have been approved in Beckington within the last 12 months, both of which will provide funding to further improve the town’s practice as they are built out.
Somerset Council‘s planning committee east (which handles major applications within the former Mendip area) voted in December 2025 to approve outline plans for 35 homes on Trowbridge Road, near the entrance to the Beckington Services (just off the busy roundabout linking the A36 to the A361).
The plans, put forward by the London-based OG Group, will see new homes built south of the village’s Starbucks outlet and Travelodge, with a pedestrian and cycling access being delivered at the southern end of the site onto Goose Street – providing an easier route to the surgery.
This development will provide more than £22,000 towards expanding the surgery, on top of nearly £44,000 towards improvements at the Royal United Hospital in Bath (RUH – the main acute hospital for the Frome catchment area).
Planned site of 20 homes south of Great Dunns Close in Beckington (Image: Daniel Mumby)
Immediately to the west, the Planning Inspectorate concluded an appeal in September regarding plans for 20 homes south of Great Dunns Close, put forward jointly by Cotswold Homes and Redrow Homes.
The appeal – which resulted in the council having to pay the developers’ legal costs – secured more than £12,500 for expanding the surgery on top of £19,000 for improvements at RUH.
The signed Section 106 agreement for the Selwood Garden Community includes commitments to deliver new heath facilities within a community hub in the heart of the site.
This hub will begin to be delivered with two years of the first homes being occupied and be completed by the 350th home being occupied – with around 350 sq m being allocated for a new dentist, but nothing for a doctors’ surgery.
Site of the proposed Selwood Garden Community on the southern edge of Frome (Image: Cooper and Tanner)
Frome resident Ken McCall stated during the public inquiry in August 2025 that the new development would be too far from existing GP surgeries, putting greater pressure on Beckington.
He said: “The other side of Frome has the hospital (which houses GPs), Frome College, the Merlin Theatre and other educational and local amenities.
“The Beckington GP practice and dentist are too far away for most new residents to walk. This is also the case for the town centre and main bus stops and the railway station.”
In its formal response to the Planning Inspectorate, NHS Somerset claimed that Beckington Family Practice and Frome Medical Centre would, between them, be able to handle the additional patients the Selwood Garden Community would generate.
A spokesperson said: “The GP surgeries within the catchment area that this application would affect currently have sufficient infrastructure capacity to absorb the population increase that this potential development would generate.
“Should there be any change to this position, as a result of any current planning applications that may or may not affect the capacity at these practices, then this will potentially initiate a further review on the NHS’s position.
“With this in mind, while at this time there is no requirement for a Section 106 contribution towards NHS primary care from this application, as a contingency, we would recommend you take this into consideration, factoring in an estimated sum of £680 per dwelling towards NHS primary care to any viability assessments.”
NHS Somerset was approached by the Local Democracy Reporting Service but did not respond to requests for comment about how the additional funding for Beckington Family Practice would be precisely utilised.