Patients were forced to endure yet more hours hanging on the telephone line unable to reach their GP as problems continued at the new £9m Surbiton Health Centre.

Staff at the health centre apologised last week, and assured patients that the phone lines would be running normally after the weekend.

But problems continued on Friday morning and today.

Another patient of the health centre said: "All the phone lines are engaged so the phone line must be down. It is appalling.

"What happens if you are 90 years old and you are very ill? Somebody has made a lot of money out of this. People are suffering. It is wrong."

A spokeswoman for Kingston Clinical Commissioning Group said that patients who rang the centre on Friday morning should have been directed to the new 111 out of hours service, but due to technical problems they were left with a busy dial tone.

She added that this was fixed by the afternoon.

Investigations are still going on into what happened yesterday, she said last night.