No business

Published: 15 April, 2010

• SINCE former merchant banker Richard Arthur became chairman of the Camden & Islington NHS Foundation Trust, it has concerned itself with being a business. 
The National Health Service is not a business: it is a public service, and nowhere should this be more so than in the provision of mental health services.
The leaked memo referred to in Tom Foot’s story (Key mental health workers axed in £5m ‘efficiencies’, April 8) reveals two of this trust’s significant features: poor management and an obsession with secrecy. 
If it had good management then there would not be a shoal of management consultants to lay off to reduce costs. 
If it were open then Wendy Wallace’s memo would not be secret and there would be information on this important subject in the papers for the meeting of its board of governors on April 20. 
There is no information there and this feeds into another one of this trust’s features… not believing that its governors should have the necessary information to exercise the powers that they have.
The effect of the cuts, and it seems that the trust actually needs to save £19million over the next three years, will inevitably lead to even poorer services than are currently in place with access to treatment being even more difficult. 
It will almost certainly lead to the employment of more not fewer managers since the only answer this organisation seems to come up with to deal with poor management is to employ more managers. 
What it really needs is more and better doctors and nurses.
SANJAY SHAH
Glenmore Road, NW3