A UNIT for schizophrenics and the chronically mentally ill in the middle of a plush housing scheme is planning to double the number of patients it cares for.

Kemple View, situated between The Ryddings and The Dales housing estates off the A59 at Langho, has been operating relatively unnoticed for several months.

Now residents of the estates, which are home to several Blackburn Rovers footballers, have said they want water-tight assurances that they will be safe when the unit ups its intake.

And bosses have said they are ready to meet anxious householders to explain their expansion plans.

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

After extensive refurbishment, it is now a psychiatric rehabilitation unit currently housing 21 patients, some referred from the top-security Ashworth Hospital. Bosses are calming fears that the unit might one day house paedophiles and sex offenders.

But they have revealed that the unit can house up to 65 patients and is likely to increase its current number to at least 45 in the future.

General manager Peter Handy said bosses "weren't planning to fill the site," but the number of patients would "definitely increase." He said patients were "carefully and thoroughly assessed for their treatability and the risk they posed to themselves and other people" before being admitted. "We currently have no patients from the prison system and are not looking to fill the unit with sex offenders who hang around school playgrounds. We are not a medium secure unit, nor an acute admissions unit, and have no plans to be either. Relatively few of our patients have offended against the person and, if they have, it was many years ago," he said.

Kemple View is registered with the East Lancashire Health Authority and is regularly inspected, but one resident who lives close tot he unit has claimed security was lax after two separate incidents when patients were found in houses.

The resident, who does not want to be named, said: "Patients are frequently found wandering around the estate. There have been two incidents that I know of where they have been found in houses and I found one trying to enter my car. "The patients might be harmless, but there seems to be a lack of security and, if they can't control 21, how will they control double that? If the intake is to increase, we will be seeking water-tight assurances that security at the unit will be stepped up," she said.

A police spokesman said, as Kemple View was a privately-run establishment, the police would not be involved in security matters unless offences were being committed.

Peter Handy said there had been one or two incidents where patients had "wandered onto the estate," but they did not pose a threat to the community.

"We have some confused elderly patients who are not being detained under the Mental Health Act. They are not from a locked unit and don't pose a threat to the community. We are aware that residents will be concerned and are currently reviewing the care of these patients," he said.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.