Poltair hospital sold 2016
8th May 2016
POLTAIR SOLD TO A PROPERTY DEVELOPER FOR £500,000
I guess this is what we feared would happen. The NHS has ‘given away the family silver’ for a paltry sum, to developers who will doubtless make a fine profit if they succeed in flattening the site and putting houses on it. Sadly this is another example of short-term expediency at the expense of long-term planning. As you know, we in West Cornwall HealthWatch wanted to replace Poltair – not just as it was, but as it could have been: a vibrant community hub for Penwith, incorporating clinics, treatment, day care and community inpatient beds for rehabilitation and terminal care, training and integration with social care and the private sector. To purchase another site would doubtless cost considerably more than the £500,000 the NHS has now pocketed from disposing of the site at Poltair. As for the promise from the Cabinet Office that the proceeds of sale would come back to West Cornwall…. well, that undertaking has yet to be honoured. We wait to hear if and when West Cornwall is going to see any of this £500,000, as to renege on this commitment would be to betray us all. However, even supposing Cornwall does manage to retain this, we fear that it will be swiftly swallowed up in the massive deficit facing Kernow Clinical Commissioning Group, and the local community will have nothing at all to show for the sacrifice of Poltair. When compounded by the potential loss of Edward Hain Community Hospital in St Ives, leaving Penwith with no community hospital resource at all, along with the continuing inadequacy of provision either in home care or in private nursing homes, the reality of our situation becomes stark and the future dismal.