A new £9.5million super-surgery is set to be built on the old Tooks’ Bakery site in Norwich Road, Ipswich, by 2020.

It will provide GP services for 25,000 people in north west Ipswich, including some of the new homes to be built on the town’s northern fringe, and will lead to the closure of three existing surgeries: Norwich Road, Deben Road, and Chesterfield Drive.

The Ipswich and East Suffolk Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is set to approve the proposal next week – and work on the project is due to start during the next financial year which starts next month.

The building will be built and owned by the borough as part of the development of the former bakery site which will also include 60 council homes.

The CCG will rent it from the borough on a long lease that will last “10s of years” said council portfolio holder for housing and health, Neil Macdonald.

He said: “This is very good news. There will be a very big surgery on a similar scale to the Two Rivers Surgery that opened on the other side of the town last year.

“It will enable GPs to do some outpatient work that currently requires people to go to hospital – and it should be much more accessible for people living in Whitton and Whitehouse.”

The building work is scheduled to continue over three years, and £1.3m of the cost is due to come from developers building new homes on the norther fringe.

A spokesman for the CCG said: “We are at the very early stages of this project, which has the potential to deliver real improvement to the health and wellbeing of north Ipswich residents.

“The ambition is to see GP practices working alongside other public sector service providers, under one roof, delivering services to the local community as part of local neighbourhood teams.

“A lot of work still needs to be done and this will be happening over the coming months.”

The news was also welcomed by local MP and former health minister Dr Dan Poulter.

He said: “I broadly welcome this move to create a new health hub in North West Ipswich as I believe that it has the potential to deliver not just GP services, but also services in the community which are currently only available at Ipswich Hospital.”