St Luke’s a precious asset

• I VISITED St Luke’s Hospital last week and found that the main part of the site is closed, despite protestations by the Camden and Islington (C&I) Foundation Trust that it is open. 
Presumably they wish to avoid the legally required public consultation on closure of NHS sites…
The only parts of the site still open are Simmons House, a facility for young people run by NHS Islington; three small houses near the perimeter, where some long-term patients live; the administration building (housed in the listed building with the clock-tower); and the occupational therapy unit, which seems to be only partially in use.
The list of unused and increasingly derelict buildings includes all three formerly acute wards (where some lights were on, bizarrely); a purpose-built dining room/kitchen; Leawood Day Hospital; the psychiatric intensive care unit; and other buildings that are hard to identify.
I’m sure this will strike your readers as a terrible waste of public money. At the very least, the C&I Trust could follow the example of other NHS bodies, who allow homeless people to live in their buildings through the good offices of “Camelot”.     
But the real tragedy of this situation is that St Luke’s is the most therapeutic environment that the trust owns. Patients who received treatment there always remarked on the benefits of the natural surroundings, grass, birds, plants. It looks as though all this will be thrown away, while more and more patients are squeezed onto the St Pancras Hospital site, an inferior site in every way.
We all recognise the financial agonies to come for the public sector, but there are some jewels in the crown worth keeping, and St Luke’s is one of them. 
How often does a mental health trust hold the freehold to a quiet and leafy property? 
Please – Richard Arthur (chair, C&I Trust) and Wendy Wallace (CEO, C&I Trust) – think again before you throw away the keys to such a precious asset.
Cllr PENNY ABRAHAM
Labour, Bloomsbury ward Chair of the former Camden Mental Health Consortium