Health Minister Simon Hamilton has welcomed the "innovative approach" taken to the financing of Enniskillen's Lakeland Health Village.

He was in Enniskillen today for the Northern Ireland Executive meeting which was held in the Townhall. He visited the health village during his trip to the town two weeks ago.

The Lakeland Health Village Ltd is the name of a development company set up by the five GP practices based in the Erne Health Centre. A centre manager in place to manage this development company on behalf of the GPs. 

Discussions are ongoing between the Health and Social Care Board (HSCB) and the Western Trust to enable a range of Trust services to operate from the facility. The additional space to be commissioned includes clinical areas and office accommodation to allow the following range of services to be co-located alongside the GPs:

· Integrated Service Delivery Team comprising social workers, district nurses and occupational therapy staff
· Long-term conditions/respiratory Team
· Oxygen nurse
· TB nurse
· Rapid response nursing team
· Continence service
· Community diabetic service
· Occupational therapy rehabilitation
· Health visitors
· Public health staff
· Child & adolescent mental health service
· Community dietetics
· Eating disorder service.

The Minister also welcomed the third tranche of the GP Infrastructure Scheme which provides low interest loans to GP practices financed from Financial Transactions Capital. A budget of up to £10million is available in 2016-17. 

Minister Hamilton stated: "One of our key policy objectives at the minute is to ensure that services are delivered as close to the communities they serve as possible. When I visited the Lakeland Health Village in Enniskillen recently I saw for myself the plans to refurbish 950sqm of additional space within the Lakeland Health Village to accommodate Trust services and deliver this integrated care model with GPs and the Trust delivering services from the same location.
"The intention is that this important investment will be supported by support of a loan from the HSCB’s GP Infrastructure scheme. This is financed by the funding available from Financial Transactions Capital and is an example of how we are using all forms of finance available to us to improve and reform service delivery to the benefit of patients.
“I want to maximise this type of investment and very much welcome the fact that the HSCB has now launched the third tranche of the scheme. The scheme provides low cost loan finance to support investment in GP facilities including new builds, purchases, improvements and the possible purchase of land.

"Details have been sent to all GP practices in the last few weeks and I would strongly encourage all of them to give it serious consideration and make an application before the closing date of 29 April 2016.”