The highly anticipated opening of Hawks Nest Medical Centre has had some setbacks with construction and delays in telecommunication connections.

The aftermath of the devastating storms that hit the Hunter just over a month ago have had a major impact on the ability for Telstra to meet new connection deadlines, where the phone connection cannot be completed until the end of June.

The Telstra Country Wide branch are working hard to resolve the issues indicating that there are still around 18,000 homes and businesses without landlines or experiencing issues with their phones that need addressing by Telstra technicians.

“Telstra unfortunately cannot guarantee they can allocate a phone number to the new practice until they are physically connected,” Mr Stephen Legge said.

“This is creating flow on issues where we can’t advertise our new numbers for the practice or have any printing done until we are certain we have permanent numbers.

“Despite the issues we are determined to open as soon as possible, and we are looking at opening before we have phone numbers allocated.”

Once the building works are completed within the next few days we will begin setting up the practice ready to start taking new patients even without the phone numbers.

Patients will be able to call the Tanilba Bay clinic to make appointments or present to the practice in person.

Anyone wishing to register as a new patient is welcome to do so by calling Tanilba Bay Medical Centre on 02 4982 3959.

Patients are also welcome to attend the Tanilba Bay Surgery if needed.

An official opening of the surgery will be advertised in the coming weeks.

Patients will be able to visit the practice from Monday the 22nd June in person to register.

”We look forward to serving the people of Tea Gardens, Hawks Nest and meeting new patients in the coming weeks.”