The £15m Sleaford Street Health Centre officially opened on 12 September. It replaces the Thessaly Road branch surgery and runs to 8pm Monday to Thursday.

Nine Elms has a purpose-built NHS health centre, and the most useful thing about it is the closing time. Sleaford Street Health Centre is open until 8pm from Monday to Thursday, and until 6.30pm on Friday. Battersea Fields Practice, which runs it, closes at 6.30pm every day at its main Austin Road site.

The council announced the official opening on Saturday 12 September. The building cost £15 million, and Wandsworth Council put in the majority of it from contributions collected from local developers. (Wandsworth Council)

The practical details

  • Address: 33 Sleaford Street, SW8 5FD
  • Phone: 020 7627 7100, the same number as before
  • Open: 8am to 8pm Monday to Thursday, 8am to 6.30pm Friday, closed Saturday and Sunday
  • Practice: Battersea Fields Practice, part of Battersea Primary Care Network

The centre replaces the practice’s smaller branch surgery on Thessaly Road, about three minutes’ walk away. The main site at 3 Austin Road, SW11 5JP is unaffected and stays open 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday. (Battersea Fields Practice)

Patients did not have to do anything. The practice told them in its own letter that they would stay registered, keep the same staff and use the same phone number and website.

Chart comparing weekly opening hours at Battersea Fields Practice's two sites, showing Sleaford Street open to 8pm Monday to Thursday and Austin Road to 6.30pm
Opening hours at the practice's two sites, as published on its own website on 13 September 2026.

What the money bought

The council says the centre gives community health providers room to work locally, with 22 consulting rooms and multiple treatment spaces, and supports both face to face and virtual appointments.

That is a bigger building than the one the council described when it announced the scheme. Its October 2025 release put the new centre at 14 consulting rooms and five treatment rooms, plus rooms for interviews and groups. The council has not explained the difference between the two counts, and we have not been able to reconcile them from published documents.

The services listed when the scheme was announced were GP-led care plus nursing, physiotherapy, mental health support, children’s clinics, health checks, blood tests and minor surgery. (Wandsworth Council, October 2025)

The building sits inside the Vauxhall, Nine Elms and Battersea opportunity area, and the council frames it as growth paying for itself. Its cabinet member for health called it “a great example of what responsible growth looks like, using investment generated by development to provide the services and infrastructure local communities need”. The council’s own framing a year ago was blunter: the investment came “without a penny added to their Council Tax”.

Six organisations are named as partners: NHS South West London, Wandsworth Council, Battersea Power Station, Peabody, NHS Property Services and Battersea Fields Practice.

It arrived four months late, and quietly

Saturday’s announcement marks the formal opening, not the day the doors opened.

The council said in October 2025 that the centre would open in January 2026. The practice’s letter to patients carried that date too. It was then updated, on 16 April 2026, to say the move would happen “early next month”. The branch moved to Sleaford Street in May.

The hours have gone the other way. The practice promised patients 8.30am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday at the new site. Its website now lists 8am to 8pm on four of those days. That is 58.5 hours a week against the 50 it committed to.

What it means for you

If you are registered at Battersea Fields Practice, the Sleaford Street site is the one to book at when you need an appointment after work. It is the only one of the two open past 6.30pm.

If you live on the Patmore, Savona or Carey Gardens estates, this is the surgery the council says the centre was built to serve, alongside the new flats going up around it.

If you are not registered with the practice, the centre does not change your GP. It is a Battersea Fields Practice site, not a walk-in centre, and the NHS 111 service remains the route for urgent advice when practices are closed.

If you want to see where developer money goes in this borough, this is one of the clearest examples on the ground. Developer contributions are negotiated scheme by scheme and recorded in the council’s own planning decisions. We track planning in Wandsworth here.

Getting there is worth a check first. Battersea Park Road has eastbound lane restrictions at Pump House Lane until 1 October, and the Nine Elms works at Cringle Street, Kirtling Street and Ponton Road run to February 2027. Our roadworks and travel page has the current list.

Sources