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Walk-in scrutiny
• DOES the Camden health scrutiny committee not scrutinise major healthcare changes if they affect only vulnerable people?
I ask because of the apparent reluctance of its chairman, Councillor David Abrahams, to discuss the closure of the Tottenham Mews walk-in service in committee.
He says that they are too busy even though the closure of this psychiatric service, set for June, was announced a whole year ago.
I understand that Cllr Abrahams has seen evidence that in the run-up to the closure decision by the Camden Mental Health NHS Trust, vulnerable patients were misled about their legal right to be consulted and that the service was systematically run down to apparently justify the closure due to lack of patients. He has also been given evidence showing that the walk-in cares for 220 different patients a year, not the 35 that the trust initially told him.
The New Journal has reported that the trust made illegal moves to close the service last year, according to a solicitor acting on behalf of a patient.
The scrutiny committee has a legal duty to scrutinise healthcare changes that are a “substantial variation of service” in Camden.
But how can the closure of a 10-year-old clinic with 220 patients not be considered a substantial variation, you ask?
By officially describing it as a “redeployment”, a “reprovision”, a “reallocation”, and not a closure, as the trust has done, and misreporting the attendance.
All they need is the committee to go along with this description without scrutiny. And they have.
It is difficult to believe that the avoidance of the scrutiny committee is not related to the need for the mental health trust to co-operate with the council’s share of the £11 million cuts to trust services.
The council co-funds the NHS trust.
We are told that it is also unrelated to a £3.3 million section 106 planning agreement payout from the University College London Hospital to the mental health trust.
The £3.3million was supposed to cover the costs of temporarily relocating all the services currently based at the Tottenham Mews site while the building is redeveloped by the UCLH with luxury flats above. It is strange that all the £3.3million will be handed over even though it includes the costs of a walk-in service that will no longer exist.
Coincidentally, Cllr Abrahams also chairs the council’s development control committee which is poised to agree the payout. The emptying of the walk-in part of the building just before it is due to be demolished is supposed to be a coincidence.
The committee should not rely on its chairman to scrutinise large changes to healthcare.
His integrity is not in doubt, but neither is his political allegiance.
If the scrutiny committee – with members from all parties representing a spectrum of views – is unable to scrutinise a controversial change to healthcare like the walk-in, service users like myself will have to wonder if there is something to hide.
ROBIN GANDY
Redhill Street, NW1
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