CONFIRMED

Anger as mental health ward sold

A mental health trust has come under fire for not giving the public a say on a decision to sell a hospital ward for £6.32m.

Last week, the Gazette exclusively reported plans to sell part of the old St Martin’s site in Canterbury - but at the time, the Kent and Medway Partnership Trust said no decision had been made.

On Friday, it was announced that the Victorian wing of the hospital, which has 15 beds for older people with conditions such as dementia, had been purchased by the housing organisation Homes England.

The NHS trust has agreed to vacate the building, which contains Cranmer Ward, a chapel, library and therapeutic space for patients and some staff offices, by April 2020 at the latest, but has not yet confirmed where these facilities will be transferred.

In a letter to all staff, KMPT chief executive Helen Greatorex said the sale of Cranmer, which she described as not “fit for purpose,” has been under consideration for “a number of years”.

“The size and scale of it truly is a remnant of the asylums of the early nineteen hundreds, not the modern mental health service we want to provide,” she continued.

The Gazette understands patients currently being cared for within the old site could be transferred to Samphire Ward, a newer acute ward within St Martin’s for men aged 18 to 65 struggling with severe conditions such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or psychosis.

This would lead to the effective loss of 15 beds - a move campaigners fear would place severe strain on acute mental health services and one they say should not go ahead without patients and their carers being formally consulted.

With a total of 69 beds for adult under-65s at the St Martin’s site in Littlebourne Road, a loss of beds for that age group in Samphire Ward would mean a reduction in capacity of more than 20%.

The sale was finalised at a meeting of the KMPT board last Thursday, and it has been confirmed that proceeds will go towards a programme of “ward upgrades”, including £2.5m worth of work to Samphire Ward.

Roselin Sayer, whose niece Natalie Gray tragically took her own life in April 2015 after periods of being hospitalised in St Martin’s and later Priority House in Maidstone, said the potential loss of beds was “extremely concerning”.

“You’re dealing with people’s lives,” she said.

“They were struggling in 2015 to find beds. Bearing in mind that mental health issues have only got worse, to be cutting beds now is extremely concerning. You’re going to get patients placed out of the area or shoved back in the community.”

Miss Gray, who had a long history of mental health difficulties, was just 24 when she discharged herself from Priority House and made her way to Barming railway station, where she was hit and killed by a train. An inquest later ruled that negligence on the part of KMPT had played a role in her death.

“They need those beds,” Ms Sayer, who lives in Aylesham, continued. “If they have issues with bed numbers, you’re going to get more people put back out in the community when they don’t feel ready. I know that in Natalie’s case, she wasn’t ready to even think about coming home.”

“With changes to A&E, there have been consultations, but it just seems that with mental health, people look away. The services just aren’t there. I get that it’s down to funding, but they can’t take away that amount of support without putting something in its place.

“I don’t want another family to go through what we went through. They need to be looking at long-term treatment, which needs to be started in hospital, and they need to have the time and the bed capacity to be able to do that.”

Mark Kilbey, who was an inpatient at St Martin’s between 2003 and 2005 and is now director of Take Off, a charity which supports people with mental health difficulties, described the sale as “deeply troubling”.

“We are seeing service users who really should be in a secure unit for their own safety, or the safety of other people, being treated in the community. The community services are under severe pressure and many service users are falling through the net,” he said.

“One of the reasons I began to recover was the environment St Martins provided. There has been no engagement with patients and carers about this decision which will have a major impact on all of us.”

n What do you think? Email kentishgazette@thekmgroup. co.uk.