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Published: 29 January 2010
by TOM FOOT

CAMPAIGNERS are celebrating after an explosive report brought renewed hope that the Finsbury Health Centre can be saved from closure.
It follows an order from the Secretary of State for Health last April for the council’s health and wellbeing committee to investigate the decision by NHS Islington to sell the Grade I-listed building to developers.
The report’s findings – based on evidence compiled from more than 20 meetings with experts, health professionals and a series of public meetings – systematically demolish all arguments and figures underpinning the closure.
Barb Jacobson, who has helped to lead the campaign to save the building, said: “This is great news. We are all very pleased with the report. It proves what we were saying all along.”
She added: “When you are vulnerable you want to be treated in places that you trust and people have great affection for Finsbury Health Centre.”
If approved at a meeting on Monday, the report will be sent to back to the Secretary of State for Health, Andy Burnham, who is expected to take the final decision.
The Future of Finsbury Health Centre Key Findings report was written by Labour councillor Martin Klute, who is chairman of the health and scrutiny committee, after three months’ investigating financial claims made by NHS Islington.
The health authority said it could not afford to maintain the building and that the cost of refurbishment would be £9million a year, spread over 25 years.
Cllr Klute, based on evidence from architects, believes the true cost is more like £5million .
He is hoping his colleagues on the committee – made up of Liberal Democrat and Labour councillors – will approve his findings on Monday.
“This report demonstrates the extraordinary lengths they [the PCT] have gone to to try and prove the building should be closed,” said Cllr Klute.
“How can I put this? Let’s just say they have tried to deliberately misunderstand all the evidence. There isn’t a single one of their points that stands up to scrutiny.
“Closure would bring very real damage to health care provision in the south of the borough.”
He added: “It would fragment their services across seven different venues.”
The Pine Street building was designed by the famous Russian architect Berthold Lubetkin and opened to the public 1938. It has been praised by leading architects around the world as a masterpiece of modern design and many cite it as Lubetkin’s greatest work, fusing groundbreaking architecture with a egalitarian social vision.
The health centre was one of the country’s first providing a range of treatments – including podiatry, doctors’ clinics and dentistry – free to patients at the point of use. It was a principle that informed visionary Labour health minister Nye Bevan in founding the NHS in 1947.
The decision to close the building and distribute services across the borough was taken in January 2009. The move enraged leading architects, heritage groups, politicians of all parties. Hundreds of patients in Islington have attended fractious meetings over the last two years.
But the health authority has refused to budge, claiming it was too expensive to maintain and that precious NHS funds would be better spent elsewhere.
A NHS Islington spokeswoman said: “Unfortunately we do not feel we are building a consensus or finding a local resolution on the future of Finsbury Health Centre. On numerous occasions we have tried to fully answer the questions from the committee and many other interested parties.
“NHS Islington has looked in detail at all the evidence for, and against, continuing to provide services in a refurbished Finsbury Health Centre or in alternative, often new, purpose-built buildings. On balance, we have concluded that the services should be re-located.
“Whilst regretting the loss of a building with such an illustrious past, local people should be able to access services in appropriate buildings, which is at the core of our decision making.”