STEPS have been taken to sell two NHS buildings used by York’s mental health services.

The former children and young people’s inpatient unit at the Lime Trees site in Shipton Road - which moved to Huntington nearly two years ago - has been advertised for sale online along with Acomb Day Psychiatric Services at 126 Acomb Road.

The rest of the Lime Trees site will continue to be used as an operational health facility and will not be affected by the sale. The outpatient services currently offered at 126 Acomb Road will be transferred to Acomb Gables.

A spokesperson for NHS Property Services said: “Once a property has been declared surplus to NHS requirements, NHS Property Services has a remit to deliver best value for the sites on behalf of the NHS and the taxpayer. We are now considering the options for the sites and have offered them to public sector partners in the first instance...Proceeds from the sale of surplus properties are reinvested in the NHS.”

The former inpatient unit at Lime Trees was used as interim office accommodation from October 2015 to April 2016.

It is not clear if there have been any expressions of interest from the public sector. The asking price for either site has not been publicly shared.

The NHS in York currently rents the buildings from NHS Property Services, with commissioners saying both sites are now surplus to requirement.

The 126 Acomb Road service will move to the nearby Acomb Gables in Oak Rise as the “the accommodation is not of a standard that we would expect for our services”, providers Tees, Esk & Wear Valley NHS Trust said.

The plans are part of an ongoing shake-up of mental health services in York which began with the closure of Bootham Park Hospital a year ago. A temporary replacement for mental health inpatient beds provided by Bootham has been found at Peppermill Court, which had previously been home to elderly patients with dementia and complex needs.

A number of these elderly patients were moved to Worsley Court in Selby but are due to be moved into Acomb Gables in January 2017, which had previously been used as a mental health recovery centre.