Campaigners have called on the NHS not to sell off parts of St Leonards Hospital in Hoxton,
The ageing hospital needs redevelopment to continue providing health services and the local NHS is believed to be considering selling off parts of the site.
Now campaigners Hackney Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) are calling for proper funding for the hospital.
They have argued that Hackney residents would not be able to access mental health treatment and step-down care for patients leaving hospital locally, if the parts of the premises are sold and services are reduced. Nick Mann, a local GP who spoke out at a recent KONP Hackney rally (https://youtu.be/As4AJmEC2Z8), said: “It’s really urgent in the current state of the NHS and the current lack of infrastructure for the NHS that we preserve and maintain every piece of NHS land for NHS purposes.”
St Leonards ceased to be a general hospital in 1984 but still provides a range of services like rehabilitation and physiotherapy and is home to a GP practice.
Currently, to receive mental health care for older people, patients would have to travel to East Ham Care Centre. Nick Mann talked about a patient whose wife could only visit him twice a month because he was moved to a site further away from their home in Hackney. “They were separated because of the displacement of local services and for no other reason.”
KONP Hackney argue that the hospital awaits the same fate as the other buildings in Hackney which were gentrified and turned into expensive estates or retail sites: “Hoxton Street and the well-known Hoxton market just behind St Leonard’s have the shops that local people need. We don’t need more posh retail or flats costing millions of pounds.”
St Leonards has no capital funds as Homerton Healthcare, the local NHS trust, says it is unable to take over the expenses of renovation from NHS Property Services, which manages the site.
Chris Kennedy, Hackney’s Cabinet Member for Health, was questioned by Hackney Councillor Deniz Oguzkanli at council meeting in November 2022 about the future of St Leonards. Chris Kennedy responded to him later via email, which was forwarded to KONP member Marion Macalpine and published on their website, and said: “Early findings suggest that the costs of running the site will outstrip any income received from running services or rent from other tenants and make it unaffordable for the Homerton as a single owner to operate the premises.”
Kennedy believes that “the services currently provided there are those of what we would now call a health centre rather than a hospital,” so the whole building is unnecessary for the number of services they provide.
