A BLACKBURN GP practice has been placed into special measures after being given the lowest-possible rating.

Limefield and Cherry Tree Surgeries, which is spread across two sites in Preston New Road and Preston Old Road, was rated as ‘inadequate’ by the Care Quality Commission.

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In a report the practice was heavily criticised for its safety and leadership and told it’s effectiveness ‘requires improvement’.

However, it was praised for its ‘good’ standards of caring.

Alison Holbourn, deputy chief inspector of general practice at the CQC, said: “We found that people are not getting the high quality care which everyone should expect to receive from their GP practice.

“It was worrying to see that comprehensive processes were not in place to keep patients safe.

“We found risk assessments, including for fire, to be lacking details or not available at all.

“We also found a lack of good leadership at the practice and this meant areas such as staff training needed serious attention.

“For example we saw no evidence that staff had received training in safeguarding patients from abuse.”

She said there was ‘little evidence of commitment’ by the practice to drive a long-term learning and improvement by auditing patient outcomes which was ‘disappointing’.

Mrs Holbourn added she did not believe that the practice is likely to resolve its challenges without external support and said placing the practice into special measures ‘ensures that action will be taken to improve the quality of care for patients’.

A spokesman for the practice said: “All at the practice were naturally disappointed to find areas where the CQC have said that we need to improve, however, we would want to stress to our patients that the CQC found that we are good at providing caring services to our patients.

“They found that we treat our patients with compassion, dignity and respect involving them in decisions about their care and treatment.

“Our patients also gave positive feedback to the CQC about the treatment they received during face-to-face consultations stating that they felt listened to and supported by staff.

“We recognise that we have not performed well in many of the administrative processes that take place in the background and note the importance of having robust systems in place.

“We will be focusing our efforts as a matter of urgency.” to ensure we become compliant with CQC requirements.

“We will also be offering regular updates to our patients about the progress we are making to improve.”