Patients were forced to stand in a car park and listen to a heated meeting on issues of concern at Birchington Medical Centre.

This was due to the huge turnout of more than 400 people at Birchington Village Centre, an indicator of the level of concern about BMC.

It follows the presentation of a petition with 1,300 signatures to NHS England, raising concerns about the practice, and a meeting by campaigners with NHS England..

The village centre was packed to capacity with around 200 people, half an hour before the start of Thursday night's meeting. Long queues formed outside.

Thirty people were allowed to listen from the bar of the village centre while about 50 stood outside in the car park where the meeting was tannoyed via loud speakers.

Others, including elderly and disabled people unable to stand, went home.

A second session was held afterwards to enable anyone else to attend who was unable to get in first time.

Three doctors, practice managers, county councillor Roger Latchford, parish councillor Bill Furness and leading campaigner Suzanne Brimm were among those at the meeting.

Top on the agenda were issues involving telephone lines, the amount of time people had to wait for appointments and concern about the recruitment of GPs - three doctors will have left the six GP practice by Christmas.

Ms Brim said the meeting affirmed the success of the petition.

“There are going to be major changes changes made down at the surgery,” she said.

“If complaints had been dealt with at a local level by the surgery when they came in, this would have been unnecessary. They seem to have been listening to local people and acting on it.

“One of the key issues that NHS England has recognised, is that the surgery has not been communicating.

BMC is the only doctors’ surgery for a community of 10,000.

A spokesperson for Birchington Medical Centre said afterwards: “It was fantastic to see so many local people turn out. Despite booking the largest local venue we were well over capacity and apologise if some people were not able to attend.

“We know that our patients have had concerns about a number of issues and we have been working to resolve them.

“If people have any ideas or suggestions about how we can improve our services they can contact us by email at birchingtonmcpm@nhs.net or letter addressed to the practice manager and one or our three interim managers will respond."

For a full report, see next week’s Thanet Extra.