Telecoms management have explained how several options were explored to allow a Moray GP practice to move to a temporary home.
Last week, it emerged the Glenlivet Medical Practice had been forced to cancel a short-term switch to the nearby Croft Inn to allow refurbishment work to be done.
Moray MSP Richard Lochhead explained telecoms firm Openreach, which was responsible for fitting the extra connections to the hotel, had “questions to answer” about the delays.
The firm has now explained no capacity was available on the area’s main cable, which resulted in various other solutions being explored before they were also ruled out.
A spokeswoman said: “In a bid to keep costs down for the customer, we then looked at whether local network realignment was possible, but again for technical reasons this proved unfeasible.
“At that point, the last resort was a new duct route for cable to provide the service to the Croft Inn. This was planned and the proposal was submitted to the practice’s service provider for consideration.
“Building brand new infrastructure in this geography for a single temporary service would have had a significant cost for the customer and there was no guarantee that work could be completed in the timescales required by the practice.”
It is understood that talks are now being held with Rinnes Medical Group to allow premises to be shared in Tomintoul during the refurbishment.
