Pressure on GP services at Didcot could be eased by the end of the year when a new £1m health centre is built at Ladygrove.

Barry Coward, business manager at the temporary Oak Tree Surgery in Ladygrove Neighbourhood Centre, said legal obstacles holding-up the building of the planned new centre - next to Didcot Town Football Club - had now been resolved.

Mr Coward added: "Our developers expect to be on the site by the end of May or early June and we hope the building will be ready by the end of December."

The new centre, which will be built on land leased from the football club, will have ten consulting rooms instead of the practice's current three.

Meanwhile, the town council is backing plans for an Internet cafe and a privately-run fitness centre on the Lostock Place site of the present Oak Tree Health Centre.

The development would go ahead when Dr Ian MacKenzie and his partners vacate their cramped prefab in nine months' time.

If South Oxfordshire District Council grants planning permission, the cafe and fitness centre will be housed in a new three-storey building on the half-acre Lostock Place site.

There has been a legal wrangle over access from Bowmont Water to the new health centre site at Didcot Town FC. Along with a restrictive covenant preventing the use of the football club land for non-recreational purposes, the legal issues have delayed the health centre project for at least 18 months.

All three Didcot GP practices are severely limiting the registration of new patients because of acute space shortages, and difficulties in recruiting doctors.

The Oak Tree practice is only accepting new patients from Ladygrove and nearby villages north of the town.

And the Didcot Health Centre-Asbury Centre and the recently-opened Woodlands Health Centre practices have virtually closed their books to new patients.