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Bart’s shows that listed buildings can be saved
• TAKEN to its logical conclusion, Rachel Tyndall’s view on Finsbury Health Centre means that no building of great architectural and historical merit should be maintained by the NHS (The £9m question… Are you big enough to save our health centre? January 23).
What does this say about the likely quality of the proposed replacement GP building in Pine Street? Perhaps we should move all NHS services into Nissen huts and have done with it?
Incidentally, has the Primary Care Trust (PCT) bought the land for the replacement GP surgery yet? (It claimed to have done in its consultation document, but in fact had not.)
If it has, how much did it pay? How much is the new-build going to cost? The PCT must have the answers to these questions since it claims maintaining the health centre in the public sector would cost more. And how much is it going to sell the health centre for?
In the 1990s, Margaret Thatcher attempted – and failed – to put Bart’s, the UK’s oldest hospital, which is just down the road from the health centre and also grade I-listed, to the sword.
Last time I checked Bart’s was still there. So precedent is on the side of campaigners in trying to retain the health centre as a precious community health resource. We know the value of what we have built, even if the PCT does not.
S CASEY
Registered patient at Finsbury Health Centre
Portpool Lane, EC1
• THE article about saving Finsbury Health Centre is right on the button. The struggle to save the centre shouldn’t be necessary. We are having to defend the “Houses of Parliament of health”, the “Westminster Abbey of welfare”.
The health centre’s protection and continued use should be taken for granted. Rachel Tyndall and NHS Islington are being potentially destructive through their lack of responsibility. The shiny, the new, the fashionable reorganisation for rationalisation seem much more attractive to them.
Finsbury Health Centre must be saved – not just as a grade I-listed building but as a living, breathing health facility. Does NHS Islington have the humility to recognise its error in this matter and work with activists and heritage funders to keep Finsbury Health Centre? Let’s see…
DAVID SULKIN
Wharton Street, WC1
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