FRUSTRATED patients may have to wait up to another eight weeks for Westbury's £350,000 doctors' surgery to reopen.

The surgery, scheduled to open in January, has been dogged by problems.

It was open for just a few hours before closing due to computer issues, and patients have been left in the dark ever since.

A spokesman for the NHS said: "When the Westbury branch surgery was opened, connection issues between the branch and main surgery were identified that had not arisen during initial testing.

"The link is required to view and add clinical information to the electronic clinical system that holds details of individual patient records, as well as provide shared access to general applications that will allow day to day administration of the practice.

"The practice did not feel that it was clinically safe for them to provide a service from the branch surgery until the technical issues had been addressed.

"Both the practice and NHS England have been making every effort to resolve the situation as quickly as possible, and our IT team has been working with the practice to establish the cause of the problems."

The new connection is expected to be installed by late July.

An update on the surgery website said no definitive date for reopening can be given until the problem is solved.

"The NHS Area Team have placed the order with the contractor for the required work to begin," the statement read.

Westbury parish councillor Norman Stephens said patients are 'thoroughly fed up' by problems with the surgery.

"It's been excuse after excuse," he said.

"It beggars belief that in this day and age they can't have got it operational with the IT.

"It's just unbelievable."

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