Appalled that Glossop may be about to lose a significant improvement in local health care, Tom Levitt MP has asked High Peak Borough Council to reconsider its insistence on one of the 12 conditions attached to the development of Easton House by Manor House Surgery. His letter to the Council - reproduced in full below - calls on them to settle their grievances and allow the new surgery to go ahead. "This is an exciting development in local health care and an imaginative use of a building that is rapidly becoming derelict and unuseable. HPBC must not spoil the ship for a 'ha'porth of tar'," he says.
 
Richard Tuffrey, Conservation Officer, HPBC
 
Dear Richard

I am very concerned to hear that the development of Easton House in Glossop by Manor House Surgery may not now go ahead. I understand that the surgery has agreed to 11 of the 12 conditions which were applied to the planning permission but that they simply cannot accede to the 12th - the replacement of sash windows over 2m high - without jeopardising the very funding stream upon which the development depends.

Manor House Surgery is both highly successful and highly overcrowded. They do need to have larger premises and their entrepreneurial spirit is to be commended in seeking to merge their needs and their patients' needs with the re-use of a significant (though not spectacular) heritage building which is rapidly running to ruin.

The NHS funding body which would have assisted the surgery with its development will not fund sash windows. They are regarded as an unacceptable safety hazard for various reasons. In other parts of the country, particularly London and Edinburgh, I understand that heritage buildings have been secured for NHS use through the use of sash-style windows which look identical to the real thing but without the safety hazards. Given that, should the building ever cease to be a surgery, the windows could be replaced by 'the real thing' I am at a loss to see why such a significant development for Glossop should be allowed to be thwarted by this condition.

Please tell me:

• why it was necessary to impose 12 conditions, more than most developments have even of minor listed buildings
• why the alternative proposed is not acceptable, given that it is used in conservation areas elsewhere
• whether HPBC is prepared to see its principal primary health provider in Glossop constrained to inadequate premises 
• if it is the case that this building (which I have visited) will be in a worse condition, and therefore cost any public or private sector developer more to restore, with each 12 months that goes by
• what alternative use for Easton House is likely in the near future if this development does not go ahead.

Common sense and joined up government both now demand that HPBC reconsiders its position and allows this development to go ahead, on the basis of 11 of the 12 conditions being fulfilled and a compromise on the 12th.

I look forward to your reply.