A north community bidding to rebuild its fire damaged health centre will find out this week if they have been awarded the final piece of vital funding they need.
Fort Augustus and Glenmoriston Community Company have applied to Highland Council for £50,000 from their capital discretionary fund towards the project.
The Cill Chuimein Medical Centre in Fort Augustus was completely destroyed by a devastating fire in October last year .
The community project to reinstate the building has been ongoing ever since and last month a planning application was submitted for a new building.
Now the community is poised to learn if councillors will grant their application for the final piece funding they require.
A report prepared for councillors by the director of finance, Derek Yule, says that a total of £730,000 has been raised towards the project already from a variety of sources – with the council funding, if successful, forming the final piece of the jigsaw.
At present the local authority has an uncommitted balance of £116,000 in their capital discretionary fund.
In their supporting statement with the application, the community company said: “We propose to rebuild a modern and enhanced medical centre to respond to the current challenge of GPs but to also tackle the problem of travel for additional complementary services which require to be approved by the NHS.
“This includes dental, private podiatry, private physio, optician and counselling.”
The community company will manage the building and act as a landlord to the medical practitioners.
The planning application involves the demolition of the remains of the fire damaged health centre and the construction of the new build on the same site.
Rebuilding to the exact same layout as the old building was not deemed appropriate because it does not meet current NHS standards.
However, the architect has designed the new building to take up the same amount of space, while the interior is altered to bring it up to standard.
The GPs based in Fort Augustus have been housed in temporary accommodation at the village’s Telford Centre since the fire.
