THE wait goes on for patients opposed to the closure of a doctors' surgery in Penarth.

Last year, the Penarth Times reported how some patients at the Albert Road Surgery had been reassigned to GPs as far away as Dinas Powys.

More than 300 people signed a petition calling on the Welsh Government to investigate the local health board for its "refusal to keep north Penarth’s surgery, allocating patients to distant GPs".

The petition was started by Max Scott-Cook, who was registered at the surgery for 30 years but now has to travel to Dinas Powys to see his own GP, while both Stanwell Surgery and Redlands Surgery are within half a mile of his home.

Documents laid before the Senedd's Petitions Committee show Mr Scott-Cook has asked the Welsh Government to probe the health board's account of the process to close down the surgery and reallocate its patients to other GPs.

He claimed the system has "failed us" and patients had "publicly rejected" proposals to open a new surgery in Cogan.

An "overload" at Stanwell Surgery, meanwhile, had "worsened the standard of care".

During the committee meeting, Joel James, a Conservative member of the Senedd for the South Wales Central region, said he was "quite keen to know what the answers would be" to the petitioners' requests for further information about the closure of Albert Road Surgery.

"We could write back to the health minister highlighting those [questions] to see the response," he suggested.

The Petitions Committee agreed to put the matter before the health minister once more.

But chairman Jack Sargeant, a Labour MS, suggested this could be the end of the committee's involvement in the matter.

"It must be said, perhaps, at the end of it, that's probably the most we as a committee can take this petition... but we await the outcome," he said.