LEVELLING THE PLAYING FIELDS
The following article appeared in the January edition of Private Eye The governments Change4Life campaign to harass everyone to take exercise for the sake of their health begins this month. So why does the NHS still want to concrete over school playing fields. the new health centre in West Mersea - Essex is to be built by Realise Health, a private joint venture between the NHS North East Essex and fund management company Mill Group, set up to operate the Local Improvement Finance Trust (LIFT) a PPP scheme to replace local GP practices. As reported in Eye 1224 LIFT is unpopular with only one in five of targeted trusts adopting the scheme and GP's complaining that even with a hefty government subsidy, leasing the new surgeries can work out more expensive than their old premises. But for West Mersea LIFT will also cost the local community - the Legion Field, a currently unused school playing field which the trust says "was found to be the only viable option" for the new medical centre. Local campaigners claim that brownfield sites are available. The two storey surgery plus car park will take up more than half of the field, making the rest of the site less useful as a playing field and even more vulnerable to development. Writing in the Mersea Island's newsletter West Mersea town councillor Alan Mogridge says that the council has written several times asking Mersea Island School to make the field accessible for casual public use "it is they who have declared it redundant and have not used it for some years" he says "It is they who have locked the gates". But its not yet a done deal. After the trust circulated a leaflet in December announcing that the centre would be built on the Legion Field subject to planning permission, the school's governers contacted the local press to say they hadn't actually agreed to sell the field yet
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