The Margarete Centre in Hampstead Road

• I WAS a service user representative on the procurement of Camden Health Improvement Practice (CHIP). We firmly went with the current provider, Turning Point.

To find out that AT Medics “won” the contract (Private company in line to take over homeless healthcare, November 28) worries me immensely, as they seemed to have no understanding of what it is like to be homeless and possibly drug and/or alcohol dependent.

Turning Point currently fund a Citizens Advice worker out of their own budget since Camden Clinical Commissioning Group withdrew funding from all outreach CAB projects in GP practices.

Now we hear that AT Medics will be charging £20 for a single letter let alone help with Personal Independence Payment applications etc.

Camden Healthwatch’s report into Bangladeshi health needs stressed that GPs work with the voluntary sector to help tackle the health inequalities in that demographic.

The homeless demographic have the largest health inequalities in the borough and AT Medics will need to work with Camden Citizens Advice, Groundswell’s Homeless Peer Health Advocates and a range of other Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise organisations in order to provide a proper service.

Given the experience of one Bengali voluntary sector friend, I have my doubts. And, as a member of the procurement team, I fear for the service that homeless patients will receive from AT Medics’s unheard-of 15-year contract.

I call on all current and ex-patients at CHIP to make their voices heard by AT Medics and Camden CCG.

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED