CONSTRUCTION of a new £12m health centre in Barrow is months behind schedule, bosses have admitted.

The Alfred Barrow Health Centre under construction in Duke Street will bring together the three GP practices of Abbey Road Surgery, Atkinson Health Centre and Risedale Surgery.

Their combined 18,264 patients were due to begin using the new health centre this Spring but now bosses at the Morecambe Bay Clinical Commissioning Group have revealed the completion date has been pushed back.

The health centre is now expected to open in August.

A spokeswoman for Morecambe Bay CCG said: “Work is well under way on the construction of the new Alfred Barrow Health Centre and completion is now expected for late Summer 2019.

“As with any major construction project, there have been some challenges and these have pushed back the estimated completion date.

“We would like to reassure patients that in the meantime, existing services will remain open in their current location.

"We will continue to keep patients updated on the progress of the project and once we have a more definite date of opening it will be announced.”

The new health centre is being built by Esh Construction Limited which cited "design, procurement and delivery challenges" as reasons for the delayed completion.

Handover of the centre will not now take place until July with the 'moving in' process expected to take a month.

As well as housing the three GP surgeries the new centre will also include services by Cumbria Partnership and University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay and facilities for the ambulance service and BAE Systems.

A spokesperson for Esh said: “We are endeavouring to deliver quite a complex commercial project and unfortunately we have faced a number of design, procurement and delivery challenges.

"We continue to report our progress position and are doing our utmost to complete the project and handover the health centre in line with our revised programme at the end of July 2019.”