PLANS for a major revamp of mental health care in Barnet, including the closure of one unit, were presented to councillors last night.

In proposals from the Barrnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust (MHT) the specialist brain injury rehabilitation unit at Edgware Hospital will shut.

Patients will be sent to other units at Northwick Park in Harrow and Putney from April, a move it says in a report is “not a dilution of service but a relocation to other existing regional providers”.

The vacant unit at Edgware will be used by the patients from the Marie Foster centre in Barnet, which is operated by the Royal Free Hospital Trust.

The building will then be shut down and sold off as it is “not appropriate in the long term” and “having a negative impact on the actual cost of service”.

Two nursing homes set-up for people with long-term needs will be closed and moved to the Springwell Ward in Barnet Hospital.

The units, Holly Oak in Edgware Community Hospital and Elysian House, opened in 2003 at a cost of £1.8m in Colindale, would then be used for other projects by the trust.

In the report it says: “There remains a degree of resistance from families of patients at Elysian House as there is a perceived negative return to a service based in a hospital setting.

“A number of patients at Elysian House were part of the old long stay hospital reprovision work from the late 1990s.

“It is, however, important to consider the future provision of a sustainable long-term care service for complex functional patients which can be delivered by bringing the two local services together.”

Lee Botjor, the borough director for the trust, said: “There's a view bringing two separate services in to a single location will work better than having two separate services in two locations.”

At the same meeting it was revealed the new stroke unit in Barnet was also the busiest in London between February and September last year.

In a presentation about the new stroke and trauma system, which sees high-risk patients taken directly to designated specialist centres, it was revealed Barnet had been the busiest.

Patients from the borough were getting treatment on average within 18 minutes, while 34 patients needed major trauma assistance between May and August, averaging 16 minutes before hospital treatment in an ambulance.