PLANS are being developed for a multi-million pound shake-up of GP services in Abergavenny - but it could be 10 years before they come off the drawing board.

Monmouthshire health chiefs want to bring the town's Tudor Gate, Old Station and Hereford Road practices together in a super-surgery, officially known as a primary care resource centre, probably at the Nevill Hall Hospital site.

But the project, carrying an estimated cost of £3.5 million, is unlikely to start before 2017, because a proposal to develop a new Local General Hospital (LGH) for north Monmouthshire patients, with the existing Nevill Hall site the most likely location, is delayed.

In the meantime, Monmouthshire Local Health Board wants to spend more than £1.1m on extensions and improvements at the practices' existing surgeries, to ensure they are equipped to continue delivering high quality services.

LHB bosses want to site the super-surgery near the proposed LGH, to be close to hospital services.

But because of limits on the all-Wales capital budget for NHS building projects the timescale for Clinical Futures, Gwent's £836m hospital services modernisation programme, has lengthened.

The programme proposes a network of LGHs across Gwent, supporting a single Specialist and Critical Care Centre to treat the area's sickest patients.

It had been hoped to finish it all by 2012/13. But completion of the north Monmouthshire hospital, which would replace the current Nevill Hall Hospital, is now unlikely for three or four years beyond that.

Interim Local Health Board plans propose a £515,000 extension for Old Station surgery, a £300,000 extension for Tudor Gate, and more than £280,000 of improvement works at Hereford Road.

Major GP surgery projects are being also being explored for other parts of Monmouthshire.

Top priority is a £1.4m development of the Wye Valley practice's Trellech branch surgery.

Others include a £1m primary care centre at James House in Usk, a £300,000 extension at the Monmouth House practice, also in Usk, and £1.7m primary care centre for Monmouth, involving the town's Chippenham and Dixton Road practices.