Update on Asana Lodge from Cllr Ian McCord

Today, Friday 18 Dec, I invited Andrea Leadsom, MP for South Northamptonshire, to the village. She visited and spoke with the resident whose back door was smashed in last week. 

Following that Andrea and I, unannounced, called round to Asana Lodge to speak to them.  We spoke with Megan, Jessica and Kirsten.  Kirsten was on secondment from their sister operation in Scotland. 

The man who committed the criminal damage is no longer in the unit. Asana accept that he should not have been admitted at all as his needs were too complex for them.  They admitted that they did not follow their own policies and procedure for admissions.  

There has been a change of manager this week and they said they were very sorry and planned to speak to the neighbours in due course. 

Andrea pointed out that they were not being good neighbours and that they had caused many issues and raised anxiety and Asana was a hot spot for trouble.  They had not made a good start and that they needed to improve. Andrea forcefully reminded them she had managed to speak to the neighbours directly affected unlike Asana who have yet to do it. 

I reminded them that their current use of the building was not in line with their planning to which they said that their lawyers were working on that. They claim to want to ‘rebuild relations with the village’ to which I countered that they needed to establish a relationship with the village as there was not a one there to rebuild. 

The Care Quality Commission, NCC and the police all have been made aware of Asana Lodge and are asking questions. 

Time will tell as to whether or not this operation changes. Our conversation sounded more like them saying the right things. I hope we left them with little doubt that as local representatives that we are watching them carefully.

They did agree to a public Zoom meeting. I shall follow that up with them and once I have a date and time will publicise this.