Health unit or fortress?

Published: 23 July, 2010

• THERE has been no local consultation about plans for a 15-bed male secure unit at Highgate Mental Health Centre in Dartmouth Park Hill or I am sure it would have been strongly opposed (How secure is this unit? July 16). 

Why does Camden and Islington NHS Foundation want to open such a unit? It has a perfectly good site at St Luke’s, Woodside, in Muswell Hill, which is unused and being prepared for sell-off.

It could be used for a secure mental health facility. Instead, it chooses to set the facility in an already busy hospital near a main road. 

It is abundantly clear all the necessary security cannot be put in place without turning  the centre into a fortress.

ANNA BERMOND
NW5