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Patients have their say... but centre must be sold
HEALTH chiefs this week asked patients for their views on the future of Grade I-listed Finsbury Health Centre but effectively ruled out hopes that it might be saved.
Islington Primary Care Trust consultation documents published on Monday do not have an option for refurbishing the centre, which it plans to sell to a private developer. A similar Islington Council consultation on the future of the Sobell Centre in Holloway also ruled out refurbishment.
The document reads: “If we were to repair and maintain Finsbury Health Centre it would cost us £1million a year in rent – approx £400,000 more than we would pay for a building of this size. We want to sell the centre to an owner in a better position to look after a Grade I-listed building.”
The pioneering health centre, opened in 1937, brought doctors and a range of health professionals together under one roof, for the first time in London. It paved the way for the polyclinics favoured by the government today.
The Pine Street building, designed by the influential architect Berthold Lubetkin, was described as the “pride of the borough” when it opened. Seventy years on, the PCT plans to break up the centre’s services, including dentistry, podiatry, family planning, physiotherapy and the Michael Palin Centre for Stammering Children, and scatter them across the borough.
A consultation questionnaire asks patients where they should go. Suggested destinations include St Luke’s Parochial Trust in Central Street, the Northern Health Centre in Holloway Road, River Place Centre in Essex Road and Hornsey Street Health Centre in Holloway.
Four GPs based at Finsbury Health Centre will be moved into a new building next door.
Campaigner Barb Jacobson has collected more than 1,200 names on a petition calling for the PCT to reverse its plan.
She said: “Two days after this consultation was to start, there were no consultation papers available at the centre’s reception. It is available online, but is difficult to find on the PCT website.
“How this will reach particularly elderly people who use the centre and others who have no access to the internet is anyone’s guess. Since a primary reason given for moving the services is lack of ‘access’, the PCT itself is making little effort to make this consultation accessible to people who use the health centre.”
To see the document, go to www.islingtonpct.nhs.uk or call 020 7527 1086. Consultation ends on December 7. |
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