Highland Comt — too large and too out of the way to be a mentally
handicapped hospital - is to be sold.
  Half-emply hospital,
  to go on market
Highland Court
Hospital for the men--
tally handicapped at
Bridge is to be put up
for sale early next year.
_ The news follows a
meeting of Canterbury
and Thanet District
Health Authority at
which it was decided
there was “.no further
requirment” for the
hospital.
There has been a
building on the site
since-the 1500s, but the
present ‘large country
house  mainly
from 1928.  ._
It stands in_ - . give
grounds and 16- 1"»
Iopnam, -sam: "1 tnmlc
we would prefer to see
it go.”
He said there had
been some discussion
about the possibility of
using the building for
psychiatric patients.
Homely . a
. But he added: “That
would- just be moving
patients from one
institution to another.”
A The Health Authority
intends to relocate the
mentally handicapped
patients now at the
hospital in small
homely units in the
 we Hm 
Authori 
secluded situatio ,
overall size, large
rooms, high ceilings and
sweeping staircases,
Highland Court does
not meet such criteria.”
In the last two years
new opportunities for
resettlement of men-
tally handicapped
people in the commu-
nity have become
available and now less
than half the hospital’s
40 beds are being used.
The Blue Peter bun-
galow, which accom-
modates six mentally
handicapped people in
the hospital grolmds,
will stay open until its
replwtement is built
elsewhére. '

for “low ‘~;r1*__' ». >
mentally; 1 = <"'¥1I'\-*’=" ~‘- ' C
patients since 1972.
The s.w51!i»_tal~» cannot
be put on the market
until the Community
Health Council -— the
patients’ watchdog
body - gives its formal
agreement after a
three-month consulta-
tion period. '
But, the council’s
secretary, Mr Philip
'l