Practice Merger 

Introducing Southampton Sea City Partnership

Southampton Sea City Partnership was formed in April 2025 and is responsible for running primary care services from St Marys, Telephone House, Victor Street and Mulberry Surgeries. 

The Partnership was formed when the Partners of Victor Street Surgery and St Marys Surgery came together to form the new Sea City Partnership. 

From October 2025 we will be making some further changes as follows:

Merging our practices 

Firstly, on October 7th we will be completing the merger of our practices. This is a technical step that will mean that the services of St Marys, Telephone House, Victor Street and Mulberry Surgeries will all come together as one service – or “Practice”. We are doing this so that we can be more consistent about how we deliver care and so that we can streamline some of our back office work.

Access in your neighbourhood

We are committed to delivering services in your neighbourhood. Although we are merging to form one Practice, we will continue to deliver services through our 4 surgery sites at St Marys, Telephone House, Victor Street and Mulberry Surgeries. Continuity of care is really important. This means you having appointments with the same clinician, so that you can get to know one another, build trust and that the clinician can understand your needs and wishes.   

Continuity of care

Continuity of care is particularly important for people with more complex needs.  Evidence suggests that where people with complex needs have more stable relationships with clinicians caring for them, their health outcomes are better.  It also means a better experience of care for both patients and clinicians.  Because of this, all of our patients are allocated a named GP who oversees their care.  Sometimes you will see other clinicians appropriate to meeting your needs, but your named GP will oversee your care.  We will always try to allocate you a named GP at your usual GP surgery site, close to where you live.    

Appointments

We will always try to offer you appointments at your preferred site closest to where you live.  We will especially prioritise this if you have more complex needs or have mobility or transport challenges.  Sometimes we might offer a choice of sites.    

Merging our practices will help us to be able to offer a wider range of services. Being bigger, means we can offer more specialised services to everyone registered with us. For example, over Autumn we will be setting up a new visiting team which will provide urgent home visits and care for people with complex needs who are housebound. 

Accessing our services 

Also from October 7th we will be introducing a new way to access our services.  We will be introducing a new way of accessing our services “on-line”.  This will be done via our website and a new app called “ANIMA”.  ANIMA will be on and accessible for all of our opening hours, from 8am till 6.30pm, Monday to Friday (except Bank Holidays), and will replace out existing system “e-Consult”.    

Going forward from 7th October, we would like to encourage all of our patients to use ANIMA to submit requests for our services.  But don’t worry if you don’t have access to the internet OR struggle with IT – you can still access our services by calling or visiting any of our surgery sites. All of our surgery phone numbers and reception opening times will remain the same as they are now.    

Using ANIMA

Our reception team can help complete an ANIMA request for you, and also can help guide you around using ANIMA yourself to submit online requests.  

We are currently building a new website which will contain more information about all of our services – including instructions and more information about ANIMA.  We will share details of this soon.   

When you click on our website to make an ANIMA request, the ANIMA app will open on your phone, computer or tablet and will ask you some questions about your symptoms and what you need from us. You can use ANIMA to explain how you are feeling and what you think you need.  You can also use ANIMA to request information, share information, request repeat prescriptions and just about anything else that you might need from us. 

When you submit a request via ANIMA, it will be sorted by our team who will respond appropriately with the best response to meet your needs. 

We might offer you an appointment with a member of our healthcare team, call you to discuss your needs further, or offer you advice and signposting to other services best suited to meet your needs.  

If you need an appointment with one of our team, we can send you a text offering you a choice of slots that you can book.  

If this doesn’t work for you, don’t worry, we can give you a call to book your appointment. 

Frequently Asked Questions . . . . .

Q. What is the difference between a GP partnership and GP practice and a GP surgery?
A. A GP partnership is a group of GPs (and sometimes non-GP) partners who come together in a partnership to run a GP practice. The partners are ultimately responsible for the running of the practice, employing the staff and the services provided. NHS England has contracts with GP partnerships for the delivery of primary care services. The services delivered under these contracts are referred to GP practices. GP practices are operated by the GP partnerships and their teams from GP surgeries. GP surgeries are the buildings we operate from.

Q. Tell me about Victor Street or St Marys surgery 
A. Victor Street is a well-established GP practice which has proudly served communities around Shirely and the western part of Southampton for many years. Victor Street has one surgery site, which is next to Sainsburys in Shirley and the practice serves around 11000 patients. Victor Street has a team of GPs, Practice Nurses, an Advanced Practitioner, Pharmacists, Social Prescribing Link workers, Receptionists, Administrators and more.
A.  St Marys is a larger GP practice serving around 22000 patients living in the central parts of Southampton. St Marys main site is at St Marys Surgery in the inner city. St Marys also has two branch sites at Telephone House in the city centre and Mulberry Surgery in Portswood, next to Sainsburys.  St Marys has served Southampton’s inner city communities for many years.  In 2023 St Marys merged with Mulberry House surgery to become a bigger single practice. 

Q. What are the plans for October 2025
A.  On 7th October 2025,  the St Marys and Victor Street practices will merge. This is largely a technical thing and will mean that the two practices will come together as one service, running from our four surgery sites.  
Also on 7th October we will start to offer our patients the opportunity to use ANIMA to submit online requests for appointments and other support. ANIMA will be available via our website and will be open from 8am till 6.30pm, Monday to Friday (except Bank Holidays).  You can submit ANIMA requests for appointments, information and other services.  Generally, once you submit a request we will get back to you to offer you the best response to meet your needs.  This could be an appointment with a member of our team, or information and advice or signposting to another local service best suited to meet your needs. 

Q. What will change for me as a patient from 8th October 2025 as a result of the practice merger?
A. You shouldn’t notice much (if anything) when the practices merge. Hopefully any changes you do experience going forward will be an improvement.    You may notice that some of the texts or letters you receive from us say “Southampton Sea City Partnership” instead of St Marys or Victor Street Surgery.

Q. If I am a St Marys or Mulberry patient, will I need to go to Victor Street for an appointment ? (and vice versa)
A. No. Generally speaking, we will know which patients were previously registered with St Marys, Mulberry or Victor Street.   You will have a named GP, based at your preferred local surgery site who will oversee your care.  Patients who usually have appointments at Mulberry (for example) will wherever possible continue to be offered appointments there. If a patient who was previously registered at Mulberry would like to have an appointment at St Marys, Victor Street or Telephone House, then we may be able to accommodate this. 

From our experience of merging St Marys and Mulberry surgeries last year, we have found that some patients don’t mind having an appointment at a different site – if it means they can be seen sooner.
In the future we may develop new more specialist services (e.g. physiotherapy or mental health services) and might sometimes offer these from one of our four sites. 

Q. Will you be closing any sites?
A. No. We have no plans to close any of the surgery sites.

Q. Will I need to see a different doctor or nurse to who I am used to?
A. As above we will know which patients have traditionally used Mulberry, Victor Steet or St Marys by their postcode.  We will also be able to see in patients records who their usual named GP or nurse is. We will try to ensure that people can access “continuity of care”, which means seeing a clinician that you know, at a site local to where you live. This is particularly important for people with more complex or ongoing health issues. Evidence suggests that for people with more complex needs, continuity of care is better for patient health outcomes and also for the clinicians involved. For some people who need to access quick advice for a simple problem, we have found that speed of appointment is sometimes more important than seeing a particular clinician. We will try to develop our services with the right balance of “continuity of care” for those who need it and improved access for everyone.

Q. Will the services at my surgery change?
A. We will not be making any sudden changes to the way you receive care or access services. As mentioned on this page, we are introducing ANIMA as a way of accessing our services from 8th October 2025.  This will give you more choice and options about how you access care.  You will still be able to call us or pop into one of our surgery sites when we are open.  
Over time we will be looking to improve the way we offer services from all of our surgeries. This might mean that you have a different experience to how you access services now – but in all cases we will only be looking to improve patient care and experience by these changes. When we are making bigger changes, we will ensure that we involve our patients, the public and our staff in our planning.

Q. Will opening hours change?
A. No – if anything, being a bit bigger will enable us to offer a wider range of service across wider opening hours

If you have any other comments, questions or concerns about these changes please contact us using our secure online form

Published: Sep 15, 2025