I WAS drawn to the article “NHS scheme is test for council” in last Wednesday’s edition of the press, by the photograph of the old Clifton Hospital site. I can assure you that the site did not look like that in 2007. I moved into the Persimmon housing estate that had been built on the site in June 1998, by which time Clifton Hospital was a huge pile of rubble.

I find it incredible that the NHS decided in the 1990s to flatten a psychiatric hospital, move the inmates out into the community and sell off the land to developers.

Then, fewer than 20 years later, decide that it is okay to build a large new facility on the bit of land they have retained, presumably to bring people with psychiatric illness back into hospital.

The problem of course is that there now are hundreds of residents who live on the developed site that are going to be affected by this new facility and reduced property values, on-street parking issues, increased traffic and noise will all result.

I hope this new austere government will cancel or at least postpone this project which might give the NHS more time to consider just what its policy on psychiatric care is.

Sandra Finch, Eades Close, York.