Health Secretary Sajid Javid has said the NHS health village in Poole’s Dolphin Centre is the model for the rest of England.

Mr Javid toured the outpatient assessment clinic for an hour on Thursday meeting staff and patients.

In an exclusive interview afterwards with the Echo he said: “I am incredibly impressed because this is the future.

“There are a lot of people the NHS needs to see, wants to see and we need to find new ways of doing things.

“This centre is right here in the heart of the community, in a shopping centre, above a department store.

“From what I have heard from patients and staff it’s working incredibly well.”

He added: “Dorset is leading the way and we want to see much more of this across the country as we recover from Covid.

“Because of the actions the government has taken with vaccines,testing and anti-virals, we are in a much better place in this country and that means the NHS can focus on that backlog.”

The clinic, on the second floor of department store Beales, opened in December after being planned and built in just a few months in an attempt to tackle huge waiting list backlogs in Dorset.

Consultants at the facility are seeing hundreds of patients from across Dorset each week waiting for treatment in ophthalmology, dermatology, musco-skeletal and for breast cancer screening.

Around 500 will pass through every week from March.

It has been set up in a partnership including University Hospitals Dorset, Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group, owners of the Dolphin Centre Legal and General and other organisations.

Mr Javid said the government would do “everything we can” to tackle the massive national backlog of six million appointments.

And asked if he accepted the cost of living crisis was also a major health crisis for many who face the choice of eating or heating he added: “The government understands there are challenges for a lot of people, especially on low incomes and that is why we are extending support on many fronts including help with energy bills.”

When asked again if he accepted there were serious health implications in the rising cost of living he said the government was committed to levelling up health inequalities as well as inequalities in healthcare between rural and urban areas.

Mr Javid defended the decision, expected to be announced next week to relax remaining Covid restrictions.

“We are in a very good place as a country because of the decisions that have been made by the government and how the NHS has implemented so many of those decisions. We are the most boosted country in Europe and it because of these decisions that we are a country that is heading very quickly back to normal.