FAMILY planning services in Garston are set to be lost under plans to shut down a local clinic.

Watford and Three Rivers Primary Care Trust (PCT) is proposing to close Garston Clinic, in St Albans Road, and relocate services - including speech therapy and child welfare - to Avenue Clinic in Watford.

However, due to the close proximity of a sexual health clinic at Watford General Hospital, the family planning offered at Garston would be cut.

Family planning staff at Garston Clinic are available for help and advice every Monday and Wednesday evening, but if the service goes, north Watford residents would have to go to the hospital, or see their GP.

The clinic is mostly visited by people under 23, with teenagers as young as 14 also dropping in.

One staff member, who did not wish to be named, said: "We see 50 or 60 people a week and they need a drop-in service to get advice and help.

"We're all horrified and concerned about what will happen to people in the area. All those young people who come to us need somewhere to go and get the right help."

A Watford and Three Rivers PCT representative confirmed that a consultation period with staff and patients is running until the end of August, and said more than 100 responses had been received.

A decision about the relocation is to be made at the public board meeting on September 28.

The PCT representative said: "Moving services from Garston Clinic to the Avenue Clinic means the PCT can make better and more economic use of the space available at the Avenue Clinic.

"West Herts Hospitals Trust (WHHT) currently provides the family planning outreach service at Garston Clinic on Monday and Wednesday evening.

"It is intended the family planning service will relocate to Meriden in October 2007 when new premises (the new Butterwick Surgery) become available.

"The PCT is in discussion with WHHT as to where the service will be located in the interim."