I FEEL I must respond to a letter printed in the Telegraph on December 16. "Moving Backwards" and also to a previous letter by the same author "is the next move surgery closure?"

Firstly there are no plans to close the Preston New Road surgery, now known as The Branch. Secondly, the author is under the impression that a prescription will take five days before it can be collected. This is misinformed and misguided. Our policy on repeat prescriptions is two working days from order to collection. The only time this may have occurred was when we moved premises over the weekend of December 5 but even then we ran emergency surgeries to offset any difficulties. However, the patients were all informed of this "down time" in various ways.

My concern is that due to the claims in this letter, some of our patients are anxious about the length of time they would have to wait for a prescription and a lot of my staff time is taken reassuring them that this is not the case.

If the author has a problem with a service provided by St George's Surgery then the proper course of action would be to contact myself to discuss the situation and then to instigate the Complaints Procedure if he is not then satisfied with my response to his concerns.

MARGARET BAINES, Practice Manager, St George's Surgery, Haslingden Road, Blackburn.