EAST Lancashire health chiefs have moved to reassure patients after a watchdog found a third of GP surgeries in England had failed at least one basic standard.

The Care Quality Commission, which has inspected 900 practices under a new inspection regime, found maggots in two surgeries, along with badly-stored, out-of-date medicines and filthy consulting rooms.

In nine cases the failings were so serious that they could ‘potentially affect thousands of people’.

None of these were within East Lancashire.

Dr Malcolm Ridgeway, clinical director for quality and effectiveness at Blackburn with Darwen Clinical Commissioning Group, said: “Most GPs offer a high quality service to their patients.

“Operating a GP practice is very complex and a number of factors can influence how GP practices operate, including levels of deprivation in the local population and the breakdown of their patients, such as numbers of older people or children and other things.

“At Blackburn with Darwen CCG, we are already working with the practices in our area to develop their services and review and improve their performance, including developing a toolkit for assessing and improving quality.

“It is worth remembering that the data used for this exercise is old and the indicators form only a general guide to performance rather than a statistically sound comparison of performance.”

Dr David Wrigley, the Lancashire representative of the British Medical Committee, said: “There are a very small number of practices that need to sort things out, but the vast majority provide excellent first class care.”

The reports come as Professor Steve Field, the CQC's new chief inspector of general practice, set out his new approach for the inspection and regulation of GPs and GP out-of-hours services.