Appeal for legislation on greater safety

With no statutory governance currently in place, it is concerned that a rash of badly-designed, poorer quality variants, that it says have emerged in recent years, pose a significant self-harm and ligature risk to mentally unwell patients in hospitals, and a potential danger to staff when components like internal fittings and the glass itself, especially should the latter be too thin and thus easy to break, are used as “weapons”. HEJ editor Jonathan Baillie reports.

Generally recognised as one of the UK’s first companies to have developed and introduced high quality vision panels, Vistamatic is headquartered in a sizeable factory and office building at Hainault in Essex, also the location of much of its manufacturing activity. The brand has been synonymous with glazed secure vision since the late 1960s, with Vistamatic Ltd formed in the early 1990s. The company claims that today its products are specified by over 90% of NHS hospitals, as well as being extensively used overseas. The vision panel specialist has recently unveiled several new products, a number of which will feature at this year’s Healthcare Estates exhibition. These include its latest anti-ligature panel – designed for “challenging” mental healthcare environments; combining high integrity glazing with a stainless steel frame and anti-ligature device, and with optional 30-minute Certifire fire rating; the new Vista-glide, which allows “the build and development of large panels to alleviate the ‘percussion effect’ of the closure process”; and the new Max Cam internal spindle cam mechanism, which increases vision through the glass “from a standard 9 mm to more than 25 mm”, and is said to be unique on the market currently.

A ‘black cloud’ looming