A doctors surgery with 17,000 patients has been placed in special measures and told it must improve or face ceasing its services.

The Gorleston-based surgery Central Healthcare Surgery on Sussex Road was visited by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) during an inspection in May and was then placed in special measures.

This comes just a year after two GP practices merged together under one roof.

The Central Surgery and the Family Heathcare Centre joined forces to work together as the Central Healthcare Centre from June, 6 2016.

Following the CQC inspection, a report was released identifying the improvements the surgery needed to make to no longer be in special measures.

It identified areas that were not safe for staff and patients rating these as either inadequate or as requires improvement such as providing caring services.

One example is that the national GP patient survey information reviewed showed that patients did not always report that they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect, or that they were involved in decisions about their care and treatment.

Patient outcomes were also below average compared to the national average.

Other area rated as inadequate included services being safe, being responsible to people's needs and services being well-led. Arrangements to monitor and improve quality and identify risk were ineffective and did not assure the safety of patients and staff.

The CQC also said that due to the lack of oversight from the management team, there was limited evidence of cohesive working of the teams in the practice and therefore a limited understanding of the performance of the practice.

The inspection report said not all complaints were responded to in writing and the practice did not use readily available national patient survey feedback to monitor and improve quality of patient care.

However, the inspectors recognised good practice and saw staff were committed to aiming to provide a good quality service and care plans were personalised.

The CQC will visit in six months time, and if the surgery hasn't improved it may stop the service from being operated.

A spokesperson for the practice said: 'We are extremely disappointed with the CQC's findings and would like to reassure our patients that we are working hard to improve the services we provide.

'Despite these disappointing results, we are pleased that the inspectors have highlighted numerous areas of good practice being undertaken including providing the right care to meet the needs of older patients. They also noted that our staff treat patients with kindness and respect.

'We have drawn up a comprehensive action plan to address the areas highlighted and have already made significant changes in several key areas. This includes improving providing regular one-to-one clinical supervision for nursing staff.

'Providing good quality, safe healthcare for our patients is our number one priority and will remain our focus over the coming months as we continue to drive though further improvements to the services we provide.'