Your headline and article on page seven of your paper on July 27, reporting the Barnet Community Health Council meeting, did not make clear either members or my views about the consultation on the Barnet Psychiatric Unit (BPU). It also did not report a resolution regarding trolley-waits and bed pressures.

Members agreed to push forward with a repeat of a meeting held in December 1999 between Barnet Health Authority, Barnet Social Services, Barnet and Chase Farm Hospital Trust, Barnet Healthcare Trust and the Barnet CHC, which came up with such positive action plans that over the Christmas and millennium period delayed-discharge cases temporarily disappeared. Although the All-year Pressure Group meets, some crisis measures need to be put in place ,, short-term as well as long-term planning and thinking now.

The temporary use of the BPU from October will give some welcome short-term relief but only as a sticking plaster and not as a cure.

The Barnet CHC welcomes additional schemes for the use of the BPU but not at the expense of the BPU. Best practice and modern thinking demands that mental health provision should be close to a patient's home and loved ones, as an aid to speedier and better recovery so Barnet CHC members want an early decision so that work can start on a new BPU.

A delay of three years is already far too long and a new mental health trust should be given a flying start, not just another maybe!

So additions perhaps ,, but more delay most certainly not.

Alan M Sloam

Chairman of the Barnet

Community Health Council