WINYATES Health Centre provides a 'high quality service to patients', insists a health chief who says it only tops the area's complaints due to its size.

The Advertiser reported last week that Winyates was the GP surgery in Bromsgrove and Redditch that received the most complaints in 2018.

However, many readers leapt to the practice's defence and Dr Jonathan Leach - a GP on the board of the Redditch and Bromsgrove Clinical Commissioning Group - agrees with them.

Dr Leach said: “The Winyates surgery is a large surgery in Redditch that cares for a diverse population.

"The CCG view is that the surgery provides a high quality service to patients and, given the large number of appointments, it would not be unusual for a small number to generate a complaint.

"As would be expected of a modern health care facility staffed by competent staff, the surgery has a well-established complaints procedure whereby staff would look at any concerns, address them and as appropriate learn from them including making necessary changes."

A spokesperson on behalf of the NHS Redditch and Bromsgrove CCGs added: “We encourage complaints as this is a way of improving services for patients and view this positively as one form of feedback.

"Patients can share their compliments or concerns directly with their GP Practices or through NHS England.

“The practice concerned has a large patient list of 17,300 and last year, from a total of 103,851 booked appointments received only 19 complaints equating to less than 0.02% of contacts that resulted in a complaint, and less than half of those were upheld."