Health planners miscalculated the number of patients who would use a proposed health centre by half.

Plans for the £10 million health centre in Kennedy Way, Clacton, will have to be redrawn.

It was meant to be a super centre where four surgeries would be catered for under one roof.

It was set to replace GP surgeries in Epping Close and North Road, Great Clacton, and Queensway and Frinton Road, Holland-on-Sea.

Problems were revealed at a Primary Care Trust (PCT) board meeting.

Paul Zollinger-Read, chief executive of North East Essex PCT, said they had reviewed what health chiefs call the "activity" of the health services for GP and outpatients - and found a miscalculation.

"The figures we used to calculate it were wrong by 50 per cent," he said.

"They had assumed you could take 100 per cent of outpatients from Colchester and drop them into Kennedy Way."

Dr Zollinger-Read said they were working to determine the correct figures by the end of May.

Health chiefs are planning to look at the two-centre and four-centre options.

Matt Bushell, the PCT's director of strategic development and commissioning, said he understood why some people were impatient about the perceived lack of progress.