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Gaps remain in case for closure of health centre
• AT last week’s meeting to discuss options for Finsbury Health Centre, NHS Islington, the primary care trust (PCT), suddenly decided to pretend that the Department of Health had backed its plans to sell the building (‘Bun fight’ at health centre sell-off meeting, July 10). It had several weeks to respond to everyone else’s interpretation, which is that all options, including keeping NHS services there, need further discussion locally, and to make the true intent of the working group clear.
Fortunately, councillors at the meeting stood their ground on the reason for referral: that there had not been a proper consultation about moving services out of the health centre in the first place. Any local process has to deal with this question first.
The PCT still has not offered any evidence of patient need for moving services away from the health centre. The fact is that the population has been rising fastest in south Islington over the last 10 years and this trend is expected to continue. The financial case for closure, made on the basis of a figure which an experienced health architect said at last week’s meeting is “twice what it would cost to build a hospital with operating theatres”, is far from being proved.
At last week’s meeting the PCT had the cheek to moan about articles in the press that services are being moved by stealth, two days after briefing health centre staff that plans are under way to move all services out of the building “within two years”. Although the PCT claims “general staff agreement” with service removal, a staff consultation in February 2008 showed nearly all services, particularly those whose patients often have severe mobility problems, felt they should stay in an improved health centre.
The issue will now return to a public forum, the health and wellbeing review committee, on Thursday, September 10. If you want to support a democratic decision about whether the health centre should be kept open, write to your councillor now.
Meanwhile, the PCT is running a consultation which closes on Tuesday about the “future of health services in Islington”, which sounds rather like the one held last year. Then the title was “Help us improve health services in Islington” while the real intent was to close Finsbury Health Centre.
This time the real intent is to build a private finance initiative polyclinic in the north of the borough, and to “diversify service providers”, which is bureaucrat-speak for allowing privatisation of services. There are the usual multiple-choice questions but do take the opportunity to write in that the future of health services in Islington should include their provision at a refurbished Finsbury Health Centre.
BARB JACOBSON
Campaign to Save Finsbury Health Centre
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