Sid Valley Practice bosses have issued a public apology after a BT fault took down their phone lines for 24 hours.

The Beacon Medical Centre and the Blackmore Drive surgery were unreachable from 11am on Wednesday until 11am yesterday.

Practice managers are working with their telephone provider, South West Communications, to ensure the issue does not happen again.

A practice spokesman said: “South West Communications will be issuing a full report detailing all the issues.

“In the meantime, the practice would like to apologise for any inconvenience or anxiety this has caused.”

BT delays pushed back the Beacon Medical Centre’s completion by seven weeks, with it opening its doors to patients on July 27.

Any comments about the outage can be submitted at www.sidvalleypractice.nhs.uk