A SCHEME to build a 60-bed social and healthcare centre, a mental health unit and a doctors' surgery at Westbrook Day Centre near Margate has worried people living nearby.

They fear that the existing detached building will be demolished to make way for the new complex, that would also have car parking, landscaping and a residents' garden.

Outline planning permission is being sought from Thanet council but neighbours are being urged to contact their ward councillors and MP about the project.

Len Lane, who lives opposite the centre at Canterbury Road, said: “Westbrook Day Centre should have a preservation order on it to protect against redevelopment and we believe that the trees in the grounds should be preserved.

“We are concerned that a new centre would increase traffic such as ambulances, cars and service vehicles at what is an already dangerous and congested junction. I don’t understand why they need to demolish the building. The NHS has just sold off two perfectly good hospital sites, the Royal Sea Bathing at Westbrook and Haine Hospital at Ramsgate. Why could they not house these patients in one of those buildings.

“It seems pointless demolishing Victoria House to rebuild another health centre, when that’s what it was anyway.”

Mr Lane’s wife Mary said: “I have seen the plans and they show a new building to replace Victoria House. It incorporates 60 very small rooms that are very much like cells, 30 each for men and women. There is no knowing how mentally ill the patients treated there will be. Mental illness can cover many types of disturbances including the criminally ill."

The Lanes are urging neighbours to lobby councillors and North Thanet MP Roger Gale.

Ward councillor Dennis Payne said he would investigate the proposed plan. He said: “Clearly people living in the area have fears for the future of the site. A major project and development of this kind needs careful monitoring from the very early stages.”