(UK) The NHS mental health hospital closed with just five days' warning

[unhappycamper]

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/14/the-nhs-mental-health-hospital-closed-with-just-five-days-warning

Critics say lives have been put at risk by the closure of Bootham Park in York, with 30 patients having to be discharged or moved

The NHS mental health hospital closed with just five days' warning
Phoebe Greenwood
Monday 14 March 2016 06.05 EDT

The closure of York’s only public adult mental health hospital with just five days’ warning could put lives at risk and should be subject to both an independent inquiry and a judicial review, according to a local MP and lawyers representing patients.

Bootham Park hospital was closed suddenly in October last year after a critical report by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the hospital regulator, forcing 30 inpatients to be discharged or relocated and affecting 400 outpatients.

Rachael Maskell, Labour MP for York Central, said patients had been badly let down by the health service and that Jeremy Hunt, the secretary of state for health, had failed to address a crisis in which vulnerable mental health patients had been left for months without local services.

The CQC said the building, built in 1777, posed a “significant risk” to inpatients, but critics of the decision to close it with such little notice say it could either have been repaired or shut at a later date once local replacement services had been arranged. There is speculation that Bootham Park, a Grade I-listed building with a chapel and grounds in central York, will now be sold off to private developers.