I've always been a huge fan of the NHS - and my admiration for the organisation and its staff has only grown over the last decade.

As regular readers will know I had a major cancer operation six and a half years ago and further follow-up treatment since.

Thanks to the brilliant team at Ipswich Hospital and research being carried out across Britain I'm now as fit and well as I could expect to be in my mid-60s.

I also know someone who had a heart attack in Ipswich a few weeks ago.

Thanks to rapid teamwork between the East Anglian Ambulance Service and specialists at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, they were treated within a few hours and were recovering at home 48 hours later.

When the chips are down, you should be able to rely on the NHS to give you superb treatment - and I am in awe at the rapid changes that mean that conditions that used to be life-changing can now be treated and patients can resume their lives.

But there is another side of the NHS that can be incredibly frustrating - and that is the bureaucracy that surrounds any new developments.

This can, in particular, affect developments in primary care - the provision of GP services - and residents in part of Ipswich and villages to the north of the town have recently found out exactly what that means.

Seven years ago officials at NHS Suffolk (or whatever it was called at that time) decided to combine patients from three practices in the area into a new "Super Surgery" on the Tooks site on the Old Norwich Road. 

When the surgery at Claydon closed that was combined with three Ipswich surgeries which were brought together as the Cardinal Medical Practice.

The smallest surgery, Deben Road, became the administrative centre for the practice while the two remaining buildings at Chesterfield Drive and Norwich Road handle all the surgeries.

So effectively the patients from four existing surgeries were combined in two existing buildings - but that was only going to be a temporary move until the new Super Surgery opened.

A recent survey showed that patient satisfaction there was not the highest - but staff seem to be doing a very good job working in what is essentially a transitional set-up.

But seven years after the new surgery was originally proposed, what has happened? Diddly squat! There's been occasional flurries of activity but nothing has happened on the ground.

At one stage the NHS thought it might like to move into the old Aldi in Meredith Road. In the end that found a more appropriate use as a Farm Foods supermarket but it wasted the best part of a year.

Two years ago it really felt as if we were getting somewhere. Plans were drawn up. Agreement was reached for Ipswich Council to build and own the building and lease it to the NHS. 

Local people were asked for their views on the plan and it was listed for discussion by planning committee members.

Some councillors thought it had gone through, but it hadn't formally been discussed because increased costs meant the NHS decided the project had to be reconsidered.

One councillor said to me: "It's very frustrating. They say they can't afford to go ahead because costs have gone up. But why have costs gone up? Because they've delayed making a decision and inflation has taken off!"

To be fair, we do have two bureaucracies at play here - the NHS and the council. They seem to be effectively squabbling over which pot of public money - general taxation or council tax - should be used to build the surgery.

And of course every delay while they discuss every detail means inflation cranks up yet again!

The opinions expressed in this column are the personal views of Paul Geater and do not necessarily reflect views held by this newspaper, its sister publications or its owner and publisher Newsquest Media Group Ltd.