SAVED! FINSBURY HEALTH CENTRE SET TO REMAIN OPEN

Published: 3 September, 2010
EXCLUSIVE by TOM FOOT

THE Finsbury Health Centre has been saved from closure.

Councillors told a meeting at the Town Hall last night (Thursday) the battle to save Berthold Lubetkin’s historic building had been won.

The grade-I listed building in Pine Street had been threatened since 2007 when owners NHS Islington claimed they could not afford to maintain it.

NHS Islington’s original plan to build a replacement centre in Holloway is no longer viable due to a funding crisis in the NHS, the meeting was told.

Health scrutiny committee chairman Martin Klute said: “We have completed stage one in the battle for the health centre, now the question is how do we restore it?”

Councillor Janet Burgess said: “This is a huge victory for campaigners. It is clear the Finsbury Health Centre will continue as a health centre providing services for local ­people.”

Labour councillor Paul Convery said that there was a clause in the building’s listing that means it must continue to function as a health centre and cannot be sold to property ­developers.

He said: “English Heritage would extremely oppose ­anything that goes against that listing.”

Now the committee is investigating a plan to set up a charitable trust that would seek to raise fund ­independently. 

Dr Richard Sykes, who set up a charitable trust to restore the De La Warr Pavilion in Brighton, told the meeting he was ­confident the same could be done for ­Finsbury. That plan was first raised in the Tribune in 2008.

The Save Finsbury Health Centre campaign called on Cllr Klute to refer the findings of the committee to the Secretary of State for Health.

But Cllr Klute said it would be better to thoroughly investigate the charitable trust option before any referral.

The committee resolved that it would make the referral at next month’s scrutiny meeting.

The meeting also heard that the Heritage Lottery Fund will meet with councillors in the near future.