COMMUNITY councillors in Garelochhead have urged health chiefs to get a move on and recruit a permanent GP for the village.

Local residents have been forced to rely on the services of locum doctors since the village's last full-time GP, James McKelvie, retired in June 2016.

Interviews for a successor were held last October – but no appointment was made.

The Argyll and Bute health and social care partnership took over responsibility for running the practice on July 1 last year after Dr McKelvie retired.

And the HSCP has now put the recruitment process on hold to enable it to "reconsider" the services provided in the village.

Members of Garelochhead Community Council voiced their growing frustration at the lack of movement on the issue when they met last week.

Convener Watson Robinson said the community council planned to raise its concerns in a letter to constituency MSP Jackie Baillie.

Mr Robinson told the meeting: “The gist of our concern is that for a year now we've been dealing with locum doctors, and that's not fair on local people.

“There's no continuity. People need to be able to establish a connection with a doctor.

“We have a brilliant medical centre in the village but no doctor to staff it. This has gone on for far too long and it needs to be sorted.”

GCC member Margaret Stratton, who sat on the interview panel which tried, without success, to recruit a successor to Dr McKelvie, confirmed: “There have been interviews but no-one was appointed. We understood that the post would be re-advertised but that was months ago and nothing's happened since.”

Gemma Kimmett, who joined the community council at its meeting last week, pointed out that local residents' worries over accessing a GP were compounded by the problems facing the out-of-hours GP service at the Vale of Leven Hospital.

Ms Kimmett said: “If you phone the surgery and find out it's closed, and you have to go to the Vale instead, and you find out that's closed too and you have to go to Paisley instead, that just makes the situation worse.”

Lomond North councillor Iain S. Paterson told GCC members that the surgery in Arrochar, where he lives, was about to suffer the same problem when one of its doctors leaves.

“We have three cracking doctors,” Cllr Paterson said, “but we're about to lose one and we'll find it hard to replace him.”

When Dr McKelvie retired a year ago, the running of the Garelochhead practice was taken over on a temporary basis by the Argyll and Bute health and social care partnership.

A spokesman for the Argyll and Bute HSCP said: "We have halted the current procurement process so that we can reconsider our strategy regarding the provision of primary medical services from Garelochhead medical centre. 

“This will provide us with an opportunity to investigate a range of options which we hope will allow us to develop and enhance the services that are currently provided from Garelochhead."