FARMERS on Exmoor can now more easily access healthcare without even going to their doctor’s surgery, thanks to a pioneering new health hub now up and running at a farmers’ market.

The Exmoor Rural Health Hub, one of three of its kind recently set up at livestock markets in Somerset, is now running bi-monthly physical health and mental wellbeing screening clinics in a purpose built ‘surgery’ beside Exmoor Farmers’ Livestock Market, Wheddon Cross.

It replaces a temporary portable cabin which was no longer fit for purpose as demand grew.

An NHS nurse and a mental wellbeing practitioner will staff clinics for four hours twice a month, timed to coincide with alternating cattle and sheep sales.

The hub, a registered charity, raised £110,000 for the bespoke health rooms from two grants totalling £50,000 from private trusts, a Somerset Community Foundation award of £5,000, and donations from local farming-related businesses and private individuals.

The amount was then matched by the Rural England Prosperity Fund.

Farmers are already using the new facility, which will be officially opened on July 15.

Somerset Deputy Lord Lieutenant Olivia Winterton, who helped set up the hub and is now secretary, said: “GP surgeries are often distant from the more remote rural communities, appointments are hard to access and are often at times unsuited to the farming timetable.

“Staffing our drop-ins with a regular team of NHS nurses, all with farming knowledge and backgrounds, who understand the challenges farmers face in their daily work, aims to reduce the reticence of this client group in coming forward to seek help.”

NHS Somerset chief executive Jonathan Higman said: “The collaboration between the NHS and the farming health hub exemplifies the strength of public and community partnerships in delivering meaningful and lasting healthcare improvement.”

Shifting from treatment to prevention is a major part of the NHS 10-year Plan.