Trust receives £53m from land sale to local authority

Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust plans a complete rebuild of an inpatient mental health unit on the third of St Ann’s Hospital site in Haringey that it has not sold.

HSJ can reveal the Mayor of London’s office paid £53m for the plot, which means the trust exceeded its control total for 2017-18 and received £19.9m in sustainability and transformation fund payments from NHS Improvement.

The GLA bought the site with part of its £250m Land Fund.

The authority said the land will be used for housing, half of which will be designated affordable and 22 units will be reserved for clinical staff at the trust.

Building work on the new mental health facility is expected to start early in 2019 after a full business case is presented to NHSI in July.

As a public sector body, the GLA was allowed to make an offer for the public sector land before private developers.

St Ann’s aged estate is widely acknowledged to be some of the worst in London’s NHS.

In a joint statement, trust chair Michael Fox and interim chief executive Andy Graham said: “This is very exciting news for our patients and staff. It means that the current wards at St Ann’s Hospital will be replaced by brand new, state of the art facilities, which will be among the best in the country”.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: “I’ve set out how City Hall will take a more active and direct approach to unlocking sites across the capital – and at St Ann’s we are showing what this can achieve.

“Not only will my intervention unlock this site, but it will also allow us nearly to double the number of homes, and crucially increase six-fold the number of affordable homes that had previously been given planning permission. I am pleased my investment will see the redevelopment of a new mental health facility.”