Care home business case review

Highland Councillors decided today (Thursday) to give themselves and the public a month to consider and comment on detailed business cases into the proposed building of five new care homes – at Fort William, Grantown, Inverness, Muir of Ord and Tain.

Comments should be with the Council by Friday 11 June – in advance of the next Council meeting on Thursday 24 June when the Council will consider the business cases in conjunction with the proposed capital programme (2010/11 – 2014/15).

The public can send their comments to: Care Home Business Case Comments, The Highland Council, Glenurquhart Road, Inverness, IV3 5NX. Alternatively, the public can visit the home page of the Council’s web site www.highland.gov.uk and post their comments.

Before the Council today (Thursday) was a report by Steve Barron, Director of Housing and Property, Harriet Dempster, Director of Social Work and Alan Geddes, Depute Chief Executive and Director of Finance which concluded that while the economic, environmental and social benefits of building new care homes are worthwhile, they do not in themselves justify the scale of the investment required and do not represent best value for the Council.

It noted that some of the current Council homes are deemed to be in a very poor physical condition and all fall short of modern standards, presenting significant challenges about their future viability.

There was no evidence to suggest that service standards in Council run care homes were higher than in the independent sector.

-Ends-

There are currently 46 care homes and 1,531 care home places for older people in Highland, which are operated by the independent sector.  This includes both private and not for profit providers. 

The Highland Council also delivers (residential) care home services itself.  Approximately 14% of care home places in Highland are delivered by the Council and 86% purchased from the independent sector.  This proportion of provision replicates the Scottish average provision.

The new Homes would create 168 places, replacing 120 places in the existing establishments. 

At the most recent analysis, there were 142 vacancies in independent sector homes, and planning applications have been granted for a further 383 new places.

Members were informed that the total additional cost of building and operating the new Homes, rather than using these places in the independent sector, would be around £40m over the next 20 years.