A NEW care village which will create 131 jobs has been given the go-ahead, despite concerns from health bosses.

The proposal from Cinnamon Retirement Living will see 171 residential care units built around a central 59-bed nursing home at Eskside, Inveresk. And it promises that residents will have access to a swimming pool, steam room, restaurant, cafe and bar, alongside a cinema, bowling green, croquet lawn and hairdressers.

A spokesperson for the applicants told a virtual meeting of East Lothian Council’s planning committee that the range of services provided in the village, which would also have 24-hour care available, would create 131 full-time equivalent jobs which were expected to be filled mainly by local people.

Concerns were raised by East Lothian Health and Social Care Partnership about the pressure the village’s elderly residents would create for Musselburgh’s GP practices, which are already struggling with the number of patients on their lists.

Currently the town has two practices based in Musselburgh Primary Care Centre, with Riverside practice having about 20,000 patients and Inveresk’s list approaching 9,000 patients.

A report to councillors said that the partnership advised the care village would “place extra demands on an already overstretched health and social care system; demand on that service would arise through the increased need for services associated with a new population in such a care village who would require primary care and other services, and particularly those elderly and frail residents of the care home who will have complex care and clinical support needs and, in many cases, will require home visits”.

It added: “They further advise that the GP practices do not have the staffing capacity to provide home visits to a new cohort of elderly patients and this is exacerbated by ongoing difficulties in recruiting and retaining doctors and other staff in primary care.”

Despite this, the committee was told that the primary care centre had physical capacity to expand if needed and GP provision was a matter for the NHS and not a planning consideration.

Councillor Colin McGinn urged the council to write to NHS Lothian and Scottish Government Health Secretary Jeane Freeman MSP to make a case for a new GP practice in the neighbouring village of Wallyford, where hundreds of new homes are being built, to ease the pressure on Musselburgh.

Councillor Katie Mackie, ward member for Musselburgh, told fellow committee members that she was frustrated at not being able to consider the impact on the town’s GPs of the new village in making the planning decision.

She said: “I am very worried about the additional pressure this will put on GP services in Musselburgh. Local residents are already pretty fed up with the services.”

Planning convenor Councillor Norman Hampshire also called for representations to be made for a new surgery.

He said: “We have been calling for some time, with the expansion of Wallyford, that it should have a new practice.”

The committee unanimously agreed to officers’ recommendation to approve the plans for the new village.