ANGRY residents have accused managers of a unit for schizophrenics and the chronically mentally ill in the middle of their plush housing estate of keeping them in the dark over its future.

Kemple View is situated between The Ryddings and The Dales housing estates in Langho and plans to double the numbers of patients at the unit were revealed by the Lancashire Evening Telegraph.

Over 60 residents, among them Blackburn Rovers player Stuart Ripley and district councillors, attended a public meeting last night to duscuss the move.

They wanted assurances that the unit wouldn't be used to house dangerous offenders.

"The unit has been very well refurbished and you are going to want to maximise your investment. We see the likelihood of you taking higher risk patients. Are you going to house dangerous people? We have put up with your patients wandering into our houses and trying to get into our cars for two years. We are frightened and angry people who feel we have been kept in the dark," one resident said.

"We realise these patients have to go somewhere, but the first we heard of your intentions was in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph. "I am scared stiff. I don't know what your patients are capable of. All the time that I have lived here I never knew that a nursing home was being turned into a psychiatric unit. This is not the way to get the trust of the local community," another added.

Bosses have moved to calm their fears by inviting residents to join a liaison group or become special "hospital managers" to monitor how the unit is run.

Royston-based Partnerships in Care, a private firm offering specialist psychiatric services, bought the site - formerly a home for the elderly and infirm - two years ago.

After extensive refurbishment, it now houses 21 patients, some referred from the top-security Ashworth Hospital, but managers are planning to double the numbers.

Unit manager Peter Handy said the Lancashire Evening Telegraph article and a planning application to build a perimeter fence had "caused anxiety and forced the pace of dialogue."

He said: "It has always been our intention to develop a close relationship with our neighbours.

"Our refurbishment programme doesn't reflect a change in clinical direction.

"Our target clients are people with chronic psychiatric illnesses who are institution- alised."

Consultant psychiatist Steven Lomax assured residents that they had "nothing to fear" from patients at Kemple View, "or any that might be housed there in the future."

He added: "Our patients have been institutionalised for a long time.

"They are vulnerable people who can't even do their own shopping let alone pose a risk."

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