On Tuesday, March 5, members of Maldon District Council received a verbal update from Daniel Doherty, alliance director of the Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust.

In addition to Maldon, the trust covers provisions in Basildon, Braintree, Chelmsford, Southend and surrounding areas.

Despite Anglia Ruskin University's medical school being located in Chelmsford, approximately only 10 miles from Maldon town, Mr Doherty said that a drop in the number of trainee GPs in the district over the last 12 months is one "concern" that has likely contributed to the patient-doctor ratio in the region becoming so extreme.

He presented attending councillors with data which showed that, across the areas in which provision is managed by the Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, an individual GP will have an average of 2,000 patients registered to them, which is already well above the national average of 1,700.

In the Maldon district, this rises to an average ratio of 2,256 patients for every one GP.

Mr Doherty said this is largely due to recruitment and retention of doctors and GPs being far harder in rural as opposed to urban areas. He noted that "some of the most difficult" locations for recruitment of medical staff are local authority areas such as Maldon, which contains both rural and coastal towns. He added that in better-connected towns and cities such as Chelmsford, it is "considerably easier" to recruit GPs in particular, however "up and down the country GP to patient ratios have been deteriorating".

Despite this, Mr Doherty offered the positive news that per 1,000 of the population, rural areas offered some of the highest volumes of appointments to patients. In particular, over 600 out of 1,000 patients registered with practices in the Dengie Peninsula were offered appointments when requested.