Anchor runs 96 residential homes across England. Director Barbara Laing said: “We have a number of homes we are currently unable to cover the full cost of, so we will have to look critically at each of them as we cannot continue to subsidise what is really the responsibility of central and local government.
“What we have done over the past few years is to find money from elsewhere across the trust to subsidise our care homes, but we are unable to continue doing that.”
“Things cannot carry on like this,” she said. “The increased fee rates put up by some local authorities do not account for losses that an organisation like Anchor Homes has accrued year on year running its business. We have a long way to go before people in the care home business can feel confident in the long-term security of the sector.”
We cannot continue to subsidise what is the responsibility of central and local government
Barbara Laing, Anchor Homes
Anchor’s admission followed a damning study by research body the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. That report found Britain’s care home system was underfunded by more than £1bn a year, with the amount of money local authorities were prepared to pay falling short of the cost of running an “efficient and good-quality” care home by £75-£85 a resident per week .
Meanwhile, Paul Burstow, Liberal Democrat spokesman on older people,surveyed 150 intermediate care homes and found seven out of 10 residential care homes had considered refusing access to council-funded tenants. More than half had considered closing down this year.
He said: “The lack of long-term planning by short-sighted ministers has ensured that, in the next five years, hundreds of care home owners across the country will be forced to sell up, adding to the spiral of misery.”
Source
Housing Today
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