In 1971, the first attempt to create a department of general practice in Liverpool centred on the Palacefields university practice in the then new town of Runcorn, under the directorship of Tony Hall-Turner, previously a general practice principal in Corby. Although modelled on the successful Guy's Hospital development at Thamesmead in London, the Liverpool scheme differed significantly in receiving neither charitable funding nor any financial support from its own medical school, being expected – completely unrealistically – to fund its clinical and academic activities entirely from NHS practice income.

Support from some senior academic staff within the medical school (notably Alastair Breckenridge, the professor of pharmacology and therapeutics), from Pat Byrne (professor of general practice in Manchester), and from Conrad Harris (then a Liverpool general practitioner although about to join the Manchester department as a senior lecturer) was insufficient to match the neutrality – and indeed often active opposition – of other key professors in the medical faculty who were unable to visualise any possibility of a useful role in teaching based in or about general practice.

Despite sterling efforts from the Palacefields principals (Deryck Lambert, Andrew Zurek, Brian McGuinness – then an academic sub-Dean within the faculty of medicine and later professor of general practice at Keele – Jim Newey, Richard Frood and Margaret Upsdell), the venture ended in 1977 when Hall-Turner resigned his position with the university, and the Palaceields practice split into two separate NHS practices, neither formally linked to the medical school.