St Charles Urgent Care Centre

St Charles Urgent Care Centre operates from St Charles Centre for Health & Wellbeing in London, holding CQC registration as a urgent care centre, within the London region. The registered provider is Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust, the legal entity accountable to the regulator for the quality and safety of care delivered here.

An urgent treatment centre handles injuries and illnesses that need same-day attention but are not life-threatening emergencies: suspected simple fractures, sprains, wounds needing closure, minor burns, infections, and conditions that cannot wait for a GP appointment. St Charles Urgent Care Centre operates under CQC registration, typically GP-led with nursing and, in many centres, on-site X-ray.

Used well, urgent care is dramatically faster than A&E for the right problems — and it protects emergency departments for genuine emergencies. The judgement call is triage: chest pain, stroke symptoms, severe breathing difficulty, heavy bleeding and major trauma belong in A&E via 999, while the long tail of painful-but-stable problems is exactly what centres like St Charles Urgent Care Centre exist to treat.

The location is administered by Kensington and Chelsea in the London region, in a city with 5,528 registered healthcare providers of all types. Anyone pursuing council-funded care or community referrals will deal with services organised at this local-authority level.

The CQC's most recent recorded check of this location took place on 5 December 2013. Inspection reports are public documents, and the official record for this location is linked in the registration section below — reading the latest report is the single most reliable way to understand how the service performs day to day.

Urgent care providers register with the CQC for their scope and populations. The register lists St Charles Urgent Care Centre as serving:

Services for everyone

This provider is registered without population restrictions — its service is open to the general public rather than limited to specific age bands or clinical groups. In practice this is the standard registration for mainstream services such as dental practices, GP surgeries and diagnostic clinics.

Caring for adults under 65 yrs

Registration for working-age adults signals a service oriented around different goals than elderly care: maintaining employment and family roles, rehabilitation and independence, and care plans built around an active life rather than primarily around frailty management.

Caring for adults over 65 yrs

The service is registered to care for older adults, which carries practical expectations: staff trained in frailty, falls prevention and pressure-area care; environments that accommodate reduced mobility; and care planning that accounts for multiple long-term conditions and polypharmacy — the norm rather than the exception over 65.

A practical rule when shortlisting: prefer depth over breadth. A provider registered precisely for your care group — and able to describe its training and staffing for it — usually outperforms one with a longer but shallower list of declarations. And if your needs cross two of these groups at once, make the service explain how it handles the combination; that answer predicts your experience better than any single rating.

Treat these declarations as the service's public promise — inspectors check against them, and you are entitled to ask exactly how each one shows up in staffing and daily practice.

Exact availability varies by location — treat this as the typical scope of a urgent care centre and confirm specific treatments directly with St Charles Urgent Care Centre before attending.

Minor injury treatment

Assessment and treatment of sprains, suspected simple fractures, dislocated fingers and minor head injuries without loss of consciousness.

Wound care

Cleaning, closing (steri-strips, glue or sutures) and dressing cuts and lacerations, with tetanus cover where needed.

X-ray facilities

On-site imaging at many centres for suspected fractures — phone ahead to confirm X-ray hours, which can be shorter than centre hours.

Minor illness treatment

Same-day assessment of infections, rashes, urinary symptoms, ear and throat problems, and similar conditions that cannot wait.

Burns and scalds

Assessment and dressing of minor burns; deeper or larger burns are stabilised and referred to specialist services.

Emergency contraception

Time-critical provision available at most centres, alongside signposting to ongoing sexual health services.

Foreign body removal

Removal of splinters, glass and simple foreign bodies from skin, eyes and ears where safe to do so in the clinic.

To contact St Charles Urgent Care Centre directly, call 02089624265 or use the enquiry route on its website (linked in the contact section above).

Most urgent treatment centres, including NHS-commissioned ones, accept walk-ins — but the smarter route is NHS 111 (phone or online), which can book you a timed arrival slot and pre-triage you, halving waiting room time. Peak pressure is typically evenings and weekend afternoons; early morning is the quietest window if timing is flexible.

Bring your medications list and any relevant history — the centre may not have full access to your GP record. After treatment, the centre sends a summary to your GP practice; if follow-up (fracture clinic, wound review, physiotherapy) is needed, confirm before leaving exactly where and when, and who books it.

Know the boundaries: if symptoms include chest pain, one-sided weakness, slurred speech, severe breathing difficulty or uncontrolled bleeding, call 999 rather than travelling to an urgent care centre — being redirected costs the time that matters most.

St Charles Urgent Care Centre has not yet published opening hours on this profile (the official register does not capture them; they are added when a provider claims its listing). Ring the service (02089624265) to confirm today's hours before travelling — the two-minute call is cheaper than a wasted journey, especially around bank holidays.

If you have flexibility, avoid calling first thing on Monday, when demand across healthcare peaks; a Tuesday-to-Thursday mid-morning call usually gets answered quickest and gives reception the most room to help.

First visits run more smoothly when you arrive prepared, and preparation for a urgent care centre follows a predictable shape.

Bring the paperwork that saves repeating yourself: a list of current medications with doses (a photo of the boxes works), any relevant hospital letters or test results, your NHS number if you know it, and glasses or hearing aids if you use them. If the appointment concerns someone you care for, bring evidence of any legal authority you hold — power of attorney documents change what staff can lawfully discuss with you.

Expect the first appointment to include identity and history checks, a discussion of what you need, and an examination or assessment appropriate to the service. Be direct about two things in particular: everything you are taking (including over-the-counter and herbal products), and what outcome you actually want — clinicians plan differently for "I want to be seen quickly" versus "I want the most thorough option".

Before you leave, make sure three questions have answers: what happens next, who does it, and when. Vague follow-up arrangements are where care most often goes adrift; a specific next step — a booked review, a named referral, a results date with a way to chase it — is the mark of a well-run service, and it is entirely reasonable to ask for it explicitly.

NHS urgent treatment centres are free at the point of use for everyone, including overseas visitors for the initial assessment of urgent conditions. Prescriptions issued carry the standard NHS charge unless you are exempt.

A small number of centres in this category are private urgent-care clinics with published consultation and treatment fees, sometimes covered by private medical insurance — check the provider's website or call before attending if the funding route matters to you.

You will find St Charles Urgent Care Centre at St Charles Centre for Health & Wellbeing,Exmoor Street,London. The W10 6DZ postcode places it in the W10 district of London, and entering the full postcode into a sat-nav or maps app will route you precisely — or use the Google Maps link for this exact location.

If you are travelling by public transport, plan the last leg around the postcode rather than the service name — journey planners resolve postcodes far more reliably. Arriving by car, check parking arrangements when you book: town-centre services often rely on nearby public car parks, while suburban and residential locations usually offer on-site or on-street options.

Think about journey frequency before fixating on any single provider: a one-off assessment justifies travel, but ongoing care multiplies every mile. With 5,528 providers of all types across London, most neighbourhoods — including W10 — have credible options within a short journey.

If you use a wheelchair, travel with a carer, or need any adjustment — a quieter waiting area, longer appointment, or interpreter — raise it when booking rather than on arrival. CQC-registered providers are expected to make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act, and almost all handle them smoothly given notice.

If this location is not convenient, the nearest comparable alternative is Hammersmith Hospitals, roughly 1.0 miles away — the nearby providers section below lists more options with distances.

Experienced patients ask better questions. For a urgent care centre, this shortlist reliably separates strong services from average ones:

1. Who exactly will provide my care, and what is their professional registration?
2. What are the realistic timescales — first appointment, results, and treatment?
3. What will this cost in total, and what could add to that figure later?
4. What are the alternatives, including doing nothing for now?
5. How do you handle problems out of hours, and who do I contact?
6. What should I expect to feel or notice afterwards, and what would be a warning sign?
7. How will you keep my GP informed, and what gets written to my record?
8. If my needs change, how quickly can the plan change with them?

None of these are hostile questions — they are the questions well-led services answer every day without flinching, and hesitation in answering them is itself useful information.

Every provider on this site is registered with the Care Quality Commission — but registration is the floor, not the ceiling, and the public record lets you judge far more than the badge.

The CQC inspects against five questions — is the service safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led — and publishes its findings. For St Charles Urgent Care Centre, the registered provider is Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust. The most recent recorded check took place on 5 December 2013. The official CQC record for this location carries the current registration status, ratings where awarded, and every published inspection report.

The rating scale runs Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement, Inadequate — and context matters when reading it. Good is the expected standard, not a consolation prize; Outstanding is genuinely rare and usually reflects exceptional leadership culture rather than better equipment. A Requires Improvement rating deserves a closer look at which of the five questions dragged it down: a responsive shortfall (waiting times, complaint handling) is a different risk from a safe shortfall (medicines, staffing). Some location types are inspected without ratings at all, so an unrated service is not a warning sign in itself.

Reading a report efficiently: start with the well-led section (it predicts everything else), then safe. Look at the direction of travel across the last two inspections rather than a single snapshot, and treat "requires improvement" with a credible action plan differently from the same rating with repeated findings. If anything in a report concerns you, raising it with the service directly is both fair and revealing — well-run providers answer plainly.

Every patient of a CQC-registered service holds a set of enforceable rights, and knowing them changes how confidently you can act when something is not right.

You are entitled to informed consent — a genuine explanation of options, risks and alternatives before treatment, in language you understand, with interpreters provided where needed. You have a right of access to your own records under UK GDPR, free of charge in most cases, within a month of asking. And under the Equality Act, providers must make reasonable adjustments for disability — from step-free access to communication formats — as a legal duty, not a favour.

If care falls short, complain in stages: first to the provider itself (every registered service must operate an accessible complaints procedure and respond within a defined timescale); then, for NHS-funded care, to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman — or for privately funded care, to the Independent Sector Complaints Adjudication Service where the provider subscribes. Local authority-funded social care complaints escalate to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

Two further channels matter. The CQC does not investigate individual complaints, but it wants to hear about poor care — reports feed directly into inspection planning, and you can tell it anything in confidence via its website. And if you need help making a complaint about NHS care, every area has a statutory independent advocacy service that is free to use; your council can point you to the current provider.

London has 5,528 CQC-registered healthcare providers in total, of which 31 are urgent care centres — so genuine comparison is possible before you commit. The full London directory and the local urgent care centres listing let you shortlist alongside this profile.

Among the 31 urgent care options around London, the practical differentiators are opening hours, on-site X-ray availability and current waiting times — NHS 111 online reflects live pressure when it books slots. For anything involving a possible fracture, phone ahead to confirm X-ray is running; it changes both the visit and the outcome.

Where is St Charles Urgent Care Centre located?

St Charles Urgent Care Centre is at St Charles Centre for Health & Wellbeing,Exmoor Street,London, W10 6DZ, in London (London region). The full postcode works in any sat-nav or journey planner.

How do I contact St Charles Urgent Care Centre?

Call 02089624265 during opening hours. The practice also runs a website with an enquiry route. For funding-route questions (NHS availability, fees), asking directly by phone gets the current position.

Is St Charles Urgent Care Centre regulated?

Yes — it is registered with the Care Quality Commission (location ID RYX01) under the registered provider Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust. Registration is a legal requirement for delivering this type of care in England and brings ongoing inspection.

When was St Charles Urgent Care Centre last checked by the CQC?

The most recent check recorded on the register took place on 5 December 2013. The full inspection history is on the official CQC record linked from this page.

What are the nearest alternatives to St Charles Urgent Care Centre?

The closest comparable providers are Hammersmith Hospitals (1.0 miles), Charing Cross Hospital (2.4 miles), St Mary's Hospital (1.9 miles). Each has a full profile on this site with contact details and registration information.

Should I go to urgent care or A&E?

Urgent care handles same-day problems that are not life-threatening: minor injuries, wounds, infections, suspected simple fractures. Go to A&E (or call 999) for chest pain, stroke symptoms, severe breathing difficulty, heavy bleeding, major trauma or loss of consciousness.

Do I need an appointment?

Walk-ins are accepted at most centres, but calling NHS 111 or using 111 online first can secure a timed slot and shorten your wait considerably.

Will my GP know I was treated here?

Yes — the centre sends a treatment summary to your registered GP practice. If you need follow-up care, confirm the plan before you leave and check it has reached your practice within a few days.

Does St Charles Urgent Care Centre treat NHS or private patients?

The public register does not record funding routes, and many providers serve both. Phone the service for the current position — NHS availability in particular changes as capacity fills and reopens, so today's answer beats anything a directory can cache.

Where does the information on this page come from?

Core details — name, address, registration, provider and specialisms — come from the Care Quality Commission register (Open Government Licence v3.0) and are refreshed monthly. Guidance sections reflect how services of this type work across the UK. Always confirm time-sensitive details such as opening hours directly with the provider.