Selling off Mental Health property in Kent.

“On Margate Sands I can connect nothing with nothing. The broken fingernails of dirty hands. My people humble people who expect nothing.” TS Eliot The Wasteland.

Approximately 1 in 4 people in the UK will experience a mental health problem each year. Nobody chooses to become mentally ill.

The Kent & Medway NHS Social Care & Partnership Trust (KMPT) have sold nine plots of land for development to the value of £7,015, 500 according to NHS Digital data.  Another three properties owned by KMPT are in the pipeline for disposal with one considered to be a potential disposal. Whether the sales have come about due to the Naylor Review is not known.

Two plots have been sold in Canterbury, Two are in the pipeline for disposal including Laurel House, the main home for mental health service provision in Canterbury. It is earmarked for five homes to be built on the site, but no timescale has been set.

The other pipeline disposal is part of the St Martin’s Hospital site. KMPT looked at the site in 2008 in the following document. The site has long been earmarked for 200 homes, but according to NHS Digital the site is proposed for disposal this year, 2018.

It is clear that half of St Martins Hospital Canterbury hospital is in the pipeline for disposal sometime this year. KMPT looked at the site in 2008 in the following document. The site has long been earmarked for 200 homes.

Mental health trusts such as KMPT have been left with less funding in real terms than they had in 2012 as experts warn patients with mental illness are “bearing the brunt” of government cuts to the sector.

The old Homeopathic hospital in Church Rd, Tunbridge Wells has been earmarked for 12 flats and is on the market for an undisclosed sum. The Mulberry Day Centre in Sevenoaks is currently on the market with Savills and the price guide is £950,000

Successive Conservative and Labour governments  have cut mental health services to the bone. So although we are  becoming more aware and understanding of mental health issues the services to help sufferers , young and old,  are massively inadequate across Kent as a whole.

No doubt more NHS land property may be sold for housing that not even nurses can afford, but will the sell off raise enough to maintain the current services and buildings they have? KMPT was carrying a deficit of £3.6 million at the financial year end of 2016/17, so perhaps the sell off’s are plugging the deficit? Meanwhile people wait to receive services and all the while they are in one way or another suffering.

The highest paid director in KMPT, Helen Greatorex Chief Exec (pictured) received between£145,000- £150,000. This was 6.8 times the median remuneration of the workforce, which was £20,962.

The Shepwayvox Team