This is a lacklustre continuation of policy that has been shown not to work. Since 2012 the number of walk-in centres (type 3 A&E services) has dropped by 25% across the country because they are overly expensive and do not significant reduce A&E attendance.

Walk-in centres are just not the right way to deal with A&E overcrowding.

People are going to A&E departments with very minor problems which the departments aren't designed to deal with, the response to this has been to try and change the patients with adverts telling them to stay away and walk-in centres for them to go to instead. This is never going to work and is backwards, the medical profession should change to accommodate patients not the other way around.

Patients shouldn't have to be responsible for deciding where they present either. Is it reasonable to expect to know how serious their problem is, understand what services the GP, walk-in centre and A&E offer and work out which they need to be at? It isn't a matter of common sense, feeling a bit funny can be the flu or it can be a stroke and that pain in your chest might be a pulled muscle or it might be a heart attack. Sorting this out shouldn't be the patients job, it should be the job of the medics who have spent years training to understand illness and who know what services are where. So if patients come to A&E when they should see the GP why not accept that's where they have come and have GPs in the A&E department to treat them.

Extending existing A&E departments to deal with minor injuries and offer GP services is possible (some trusts are already doing this) and it will actually work. If someone comes to A&E with a cold that isn't a problem because they don't have to lie an bed and be seen by an emergency doctor, they can be triaged and set straight to the department's GPs.

Trying to stop people coming to A&E is like Canute shouting at the sea, they will still come and you will have a sore voice so let's stop shouting and adapt to the patients.