MENTAL health patients have been moved to private wards while NHS bosses await the opening of a long-delayed mental health hospital.

A construction project set to deliver the new Highgate East mental health facility in Archway is now running at least a year behind schedule.

At the annual members meeting of Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust last Thursday, chief medical officer Dr Vincent Kirchner was asked about the delay.

He said: “It was due to unforeseen circumstances. We had everything lined up so beautifully, then we had to change our plans.

“We have thought about the service users who would be the least impacted. We were very happy with the quality that we saw.”

Dr Kirchner added: “The reports back are that they are happy. It is a temporary situation.”

Delays to the £70m Highgate campus project left NHS chiefs with no other option than to begin transferring patients sectioned in St Pancras Hospital into costly private hospitals run by Cygnet, a company wholly owned by Universal Health Services in the US.

Dr Kirchner was asked if the decant should have been changed due to the transport strikes and cost of living crisis.

Moving patients can mean expensive journeys for relatives who might otherwise have been able to walk to see loved ones sectioned to mental health hospitals.

Positioned within walking distance of Whittington Hospital, Highgate East will treat those with longer-term mental health problems in need of rehabili­tation.

It will form a “campus” with Highgate West, a facility catering for those in acute psychological distress.

This new Highgate hospital campus is the last link in a complex NHS “property chain” that will see Camden’s St Pancras mental health hospital flattened to make way for the world famous Moorfields Eye Hospital after it leaves its base in City Road.

The Moorfields site has been sold to Derwent London for £239million.

Patients at St Pancras Hospital were due to move to the Highgate facility before January, when Moorfields has a deal to begin moving some of its operations to the St Pancras site.

Last week builders, patients and staff gathered on the building site of what will soon become Highgate East for a “topping out” ceremony, to celebrate the structure reaching its full height.

When it eventually opens in 2023, the new flagship hospital campus in Highgate will have 236 ensuite beds, spanning acute and intensive care, as well as rehabilitation and beds for frail, older patients.

An NHS spokesperson said: “Due to the unprecedented effects of the Covid pandemic, our original project timescales have been impacted. However the new purpose-built facility is on track to open and relocate the inpatient wards to Highgate East in 2023.

“Our long-term plans are focused on improving patient care through a multi-million pound improvement program to build a state-of-the-art inpatient facility at Highgate, opening in October 2023, and purpose-built community mental health facilities in both Camden and Islington.

“The short-term use of alternative mental health inpatient services in Lambeth and Harrow will help us to achieve our goal.”