Mental Health wards in south Essex will have to follow the example of general hospitals and become single sex.

The directive, in the Government's Modernising Mental Health Services, will mean a major exercise for Thameside Community Healthcare Trust, which has no segregated quarters.

Director of mental health services, Eunan MacIntyre, said the problem was more one of logistics than cash.

Over the last three years, the average split between male and female in-patients has been 54 per cent to 46 per cent. The trust has two admission wards which could therefore be changed to single sex.

Mr MacIntyre was very enthusiastic about the policy document. He told fellow board members: "Once I started reading it I couldn't put it down, which is very unusual. It is one of the best documents I have seen for a very long time.

"We have a very real opportunity here to sort out our mental health services once and for all.

"We have tried to negotiate with the health authority to develop various services, but have not always got the support we needed because of priorities and money."

He praised the paper's emphasis on the need for more beds for those suffering from acute mental illness, including those in locked units.

Mr MacIntyre also welcomed the call for services to be available "around the clock."

He said: "A lot of the services which have been developed have been on a Monday to Friday nine-till-five basis."

The document also calls for a closer working relationship between health and social services. Mr MacIntyre agreed: "We cannot do it in isolation."

He welcomed the promise of extra money for new and effective drugs and for intensive care facilities.

He said: "We have tried to persuade all and sundry over the years of the need for intensive care."

South Essex has still to hear how much it will receive from the extra £700m which is being poured into mental health over the next three years.

Trust chief executive Patrick Geoghegan said: "I think this is the first time a Government document has addressed real issues like those individuals who are falling through the net and not being picked up, mixed sex wards and the importance of intensive care beds."

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.