A HEALTH watchdog has welcomed Government plans to reverse the policy of sending seriously disturbed psychiatric patients into the community.

There was a clear and recognised danger to the public which had to be addressed, said Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale Community Health Council chairman Frank Clifford.

And he spoke of his horror when he learned that two mentally-ill patients from Whittingham hospital were housed next to a Pendle school.

"Our council was advised that there was no way four of the 50 Whittingham patients we were helping into the local community should be outside a secure unit.

"We worked to ensure they returned to a safe place - both for themselves and the protection of the community."

Coun Clifford's statement came as Health Minister Frank Dobson announced the change of policy following mounting concern and a recent report showing that one murder is committed about every two weeks by mental patients and about 1,000 commit suicide each year.

It will mean the recall into residential care of some people currently living in unsupervised units.

Coun Clifford said there should be no return to the major hospital institutions of the past, but there was a continuing need to provide patients with a good quality of life in a controlled environment.

"The old policy of tipping people out of the institutions, with inadequate funding and back up care, was a cheap option fraught with danger.

"I believe it was done as much to release the commercial value of the hospital sites, often set in acres of leafy countryside," he said.

Coun Clifford said the policy was in sharp contrast to the success of re-locating into the community mentally handicapped or slow learning patients.

"Burnley Health Trust managers have carried this out with great care and it has proved an immense success," he added.

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