Reading's Health and Wellbeing Board will meet in public at 2pm on Tuesday 7th October 2025 in the Loddon Room on the 1st floor of the Greyfriars Centre, adjacent to Greyfriars Church on Friar Street, Reading, and accessed through the Atrium Cafe which is part of the GreyFriars Centre.

The Board will receive the West of Berkshire Adult Safeguarding Report, the Reading Director of Public Health's Annual Report and the Reading Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment. It will also hear an update from the BOB ICB

The meeting is webcast. Please submit your email address on this page to receive the link and reminders.

The Annual Members Meeting of the South Central Ambulance Service takes place from 17.00-18.30 on Thursday 9th October 2025. To join the meeting please click here .

The session will include presentations from the executive team and lead Governor – reviewing the work and performance of the Trust during 2024/2025. There will be a focused presentation on how SCAS has worked with hospital partners to significantly reduce the handover time when crews take a patient to emergency departments.

Reading Patient Voice Group will meet at 6pm on Wed 15th October 2025 in Committee Room 4B of the Reading Civic Offices, Bridge Street and online via Microsoft Teams.

Our speaker will be Dr Kathryn MacDermott, Director of Strategic Planning for Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. Berkshire Healthcare provides mental health care and community care for Berkshire and so will be essentially involved with the new Neighbourhood Healthcare approach being brought in under the 10-year Health Plan. Under the leadership of Health and Wellbeing Boards, a 3-year plan for neighbourhood health has to be submitted to NHS England by the end of 2025. Dr MacDermott will speak on the development of our neighbourhood health care.

The BOB Integrated Care Board meets in public at 13.30 - 16.00 on Tuesday 11th November 2025. It may be that this will cover Berkshire East as well as Berkshire West, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

Questions for the board should be sent to

Every year the polling firm Ipsos-Mori conducts an extensive survey of patient experience at GP surgeries for NHS England.

You can see some results for this year at this page

. More detailed results can be found on the spreadsheets attached here.

The Royal Berkshire Hospital has a new patient portal for handling appointments and more. It is found at patients.royalberkshire.nhs.uk - which you may need to remember. You can register your email and password or use the credentials you use for the NHS App to log in. The new portal replaces the DrDoctor portal. It can be used to inspect or manage appointments and to receive notifications and booking updates from the hospital (prompted by text message we assume).

Russell Street Group Practice currently operates 3 branches, at 79 Russell Street, in a dedicated building at 80. Wensley Road in Coley Park and in Burghfield. They are losing their lease in Russell Street on 1st November 2025 and are expanding and modernising the surgery building in Coley Park to accommodate more patients.

Reading Patient Voice Group officers Francis Brown and Tom Lake at the Coley Park surgery on the open day with practice manager Kamlesh Patel and Dr Magesh Arthanari.

The extended and refurbished surgery building at Coley Park will have on-site parking for patients. Public transport is via the 11 bus route from Central Reading. The surgery will have 7 consultation rooms and a treatment room. There is a pharmacy nearby on Wensley Road.

Watch out for the official opening in October!

The BOB Integrated Care Board meets on Tuesday 9th September at 1.30pm in public online. The link will be found on this page.

Every year the polling company Ipsos-Mori carries out a detailed survey of what patients think about the GP practice on behalf of the NHS. A good sample of responses is sought from each GP practice. This year's results have recently been published.

It can be difficult to interpret the results; what does it mean if 93% of patients think that their experience is good or very good? What about the 7% who don't? Is that too much?

For this reason we compare the answers of all surgeries in England (after eliminating those that have too few responses) and rank the surgeries according to the answers. Then we express this rank as a percentage (so-called "percentile rank"). If you score 100% that means you are right at the top. If you score 50% that means that your results are right in the middle of all surgeries. If your score is 1% that means you are below almost all other surgeries. That makes it easier to see strengths and weaknesses.

We have applied this method to 6 key questions asked in the survey (there are about 50 in all). Please see the first spreadsheet file attached below for this year's results for Reading GP practices this year and the second spreadsheet file for the results for Reading GP practices for all years from 2018 to 2025.

To read more about our approach to interpreting these results please view this web page.

The results for 2025 for just 3 most significant questions for Reading practices are in the table below.

After consultation starting in late 2024 and the Government's 3-year Spending Review, the NHS 10-year plan for health in England is published.

Please click here to access the plan in various formats and its executive summary.

For an easier introduction try:
 

• Listening to Roy Lilley's 8-minute review
• Reading the executive summary
• Reading a summary and analysis from the NHS Confederation (29pages)
• Reading an exposition of the plan from the King's Fund
• Reading a response from the Nuffied Trust