Tunbridge Wells council has approved turning the St James Medical Centre on Carlton Road into a four-bedroom house. The NHS has still to sign off the closure.

Tunbridge Wells Borough Council has approved turning the St James Medical Centre into a four-bedroom family house. The decision was issued on 13 August. It covers the building at 11 Carlton Road, which has been a GP surgery since 1990.

The surgery has not closed. It is still seeing patients, and the NHS has not yet agreed that it can shut. What the council has done is approve the building’s next use, so that the conversion can start once the practice moves out.

Nobody objected. The council’s report records no comments in support and no comments in objection. (Delegated report, 26/01511/PNEC)

What has been approved

The application, reference 26/01511/PNEC, was received on 6 July and decided on 13 August, ahead of a 31 August deadline. It was made under Class MA of the permitted development rules, which lets a commercial building become homes without a full planning application, provided the council is satisfied on a short list of points.

Prior approval was granted with no conditions attached. The plans submitted with it show:

  • a four-bedroom house within the existing building, with no extension
  • an open-plan kitchen, dining and living area on the ground floor, plus a utility room, WC, plant and storage space
  • four bedrooms on the first floor, including a principal bedroom with dressing rooms, a family bathroom and a shower room
  • the existing vehicle access and parking area off Carlton Road kept as they are
  • no change to the roof, the height or the main elevations

Outside, the only alterations are to some doors and windows, and the removal of the signs identifying the medical centre. (Planning statement, June 2026)

One point the council raised and then set aside is worth recording. MidKent Environmental Protection told the council that the northern part of the site lies in an area of potentially contaminated land, and recommended a watching brief in case anything is found. The case officer decided a condition was not warranted, because the building is not being altered and any contaminants are currently capped by the building and the hardstanding.

Why the practice says it is leaving

St James merged with Grosvenor Medical Centre in 2017, and patients registered at either address have been able to book across both sites since. The practice has now decided to run everything from Grosvenor alone.

The reason given is money. The planning statement says the cost of operating and maintaining two separate sites “has become increasingly unsustainable”, and that concentrating services in one building will use resources more efficiently. The council’s report puts it more bluntly: the planned closure “remains due to costs, irrespective of this application”.

Two things the practice has told the council, which matter to patients:

  • the total number of GP appointments available will not change after the move
  • a growing share of appointments are now virtual, so they do not depend on attending a particular building

Grosvenor Medical Centre is at 23 Upper Grosvenor Road. The council’s report measures it as a 0.6 mile walk from Carlton Road, about 12 minutes.

Between them the two addresses serve a large list. NHS figures for 1 August 2026 record 13,994 patients registered with Grosvenor and St James Medical Practice. (NHS England, Patients Registered at a GP Practice, August 2026)

The NHS has not signed this off

This is the part the planning decision does not settle. A GP practice cannot close a site simply because it has planning permission to sell the building.

The council’s report is explicit: the practice requires the separate permission of NHS Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board to shut the medical centre. That decision has not been published.

Two further points of fact, checked on 18 August:

  • the practice’s own website still lists both Grosvenor and St James as operating sites, with the same Monday to Friday hours, and carries no closure notice on its news page (Grosvenor and St James Medical Practice)
  • the practice is an independently owned business working under an NHS contract, so the decision to consolidate was taken by the partners rather than by the NHS

The practice is well regarded by its patients. In the 2026 GP Patient Survey, 86% described their overall experience as good, against 76.7% nationally, and 84% rated their experience of contacting the practice as good. The local figures come from 105 completed questionnaires, so treat them as indicative rather than precise. (GP Patient Survey 2026, G82041; Ipsos, 2026 results)

A house, then a surgery, then a house again

The building started as a home. Planning permission to change it from a dwelling to a doctors’ surgery was granted on 22 August 1990, under reference 90/00853/FUL. A single-storey extension containing a new consulting room, an accessible toilet and an entrance lobby was approved on 19 March 2015.

It sits in the Tunbridge Wells Conservation Area, about 400 metres east of the town centre. That normally triggers extra scrutiny of a ground-floor change of use, but the council concluded the building already reads as a house from the street, on a residential stretch rather than a parade of shopfronts, so the conservation area would not be harmed.

Timeline of the St James Medical Centre site, from the 1990 change of use to a doctors' surgery to the prior approval granted on 13 August 2026

What it means for you

If you are registered at St James, nothing changes today. Appointments are still being booked at Carlton Road, and the practice says appointment numbers will not fall when the move happens.

What is worth doing:

  • Watch for a letter or a website notice, not a news report. The practice has to tell patients directly. As of 18 August there was nothing on its news page.
  • If the walk to Upper Grosvenor Road is a problem for you, say so to the ICB, not to the council. The planning decision is made and cannot be appealed by residents. The closure decision is NHS Kent and Medway ICB’s, and it has not been taken. Contact details are on the ICB website.
  • Check the bus and parking before you assume. Grosvenor Medical Centre is roughly 12 minutes’ walk from Carlton Road on the council’s own measure, but that is a town-centre walk with a hill in it.
  • You can register elsewhere. You are not obliged to follow a practice that changes its premises, though in practice most patients do.

If you want to read the file yourself, the whole application is public on the borough’s planning portal, including the plans, the decision notice and the officer’s report. Our Tunbridge Wells planning news page explains how to search it and how to comment on live applications.

Sources