THE Care Quality Commission have closed Bootham Park Hospital with no warning because a ceiling fell on them.

According to local knowledge, the ceiling in question was a few flakes of plaster.

Was closure of the whole hospital and uprooting and excessive disturbance for patients really the only response to this?

We are left with many questions about this debacle.

Who are the Care Quality Commission? One of their number is Professor Louis Appleby, Professor of Psychiatry at University of Manchester who leads a group of 30 researchers at the Centre for Mental Health and Safety.

How can he possibly think suddenly moving patients from Bootham to Middlesbrough and other places, or sending vulnerable people into ‘care in the community’, can be good for their mental health?

Next we need to ask what the local management have been doing when there were instructions to repair Bootham already in place?

Let’s hope they too have been booted out into the streets.

Next what are our local politicians and council doing about this mess?

For once, can we see less party political posturing and more working together to effect a rapid reversal of this closure and residential care for our vulnerable brought back into York?

Audrey Brown, Bad Bargain Lane, York

 

IF I interpret Tom Mitchell correctly (Letters, September 29) he thinks Bootham Park Hospital could be a suitable site for building houses.

While I agree that any land not built on at the moment may be considered a suitable area to build on, that is not the direct answer to today’s problems.

People still need a quiet and green local place to enjoy themselves in peace and seclusion.

Yes, the shortage of housing, whether it be affordable or council housing, is a major problem that seriously needs to be addressed, and certainly has not been addressed by the previous coalition government and the present government seem to have no intention in doing.

But taking away a large chunk of open space so close to York city centre, that can only have access onto already chock-a-block roads such as Bootham or Gillygate is not the answer.

Obviously the structure of the building, while not able to be demolished due to its listed category, may be available for interior redesign for housing I doubt any council could afford the renovation aspects of this to provide affordable or council housing.

Howard Perry, St James Place, Dringhouses, York

 

WITH all the coverage of the Bootham Park Hospital scandal, let the dust settle and wait for the builders to turn the site into penthouse flats and apartments.

Mark my words.

Ken Finch, York