A CARE home that was left without power for five days earlier this year has been inspected following the incident.

A Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection at Holly Bank Care Home in Arnside was ‘in part’ triggered following a water leak in February that resulted in four residents treated for hyperthermia and all 15 residents evacuated to temporary accommodation.

Read more: Care home residents suffer from hypothermia after power loss

Inspectors awarded the care home a ‘Good’ rating after the visit on May 4, although inspectors only investigated the key questions of ‘safe’ and ‘well-led’ after receiving concerns about the incident at the home.

The care home was given good for the caring, responsive, well led and effective categories, but ‘requires improvement’ in the safe category.

Inspectors said: “In part, the inspection was as a result of concerns around an environmental issue and the subsequent temporary re-location of people. It was established the service could not have foreseen these issues.

“Maintenance processes were in place and could not have expected to warn of the likelihood of a concern in this area.

“The provider acted during and immediately after the inspection to address the issues we found. This included increasing the staffing team and implementing improved checks and reviews.”

Among the findings was that the provider had “not always followed safe recruitment procedures” and that “checks with previous employers in health and social care and some other pre-employment considerations had not been completed in some of the recruitment files” the CQC considered.

However, inspectors said there was ‘no evidence’ anyone had been harmed because of the omissions and some checks were resolved during the inspection.

It also found that staff were under ‘pressure’ due to staffing levels.

The report said: “Some relatives commented negatively about staffing numbers. One said, "There's not the staffing levels there needs to be." Another said, "There's not enough staff, they're under pressure."”

Inspectors praised the home for its ‘person centred care’ and said ‘most’ relatives commented ‘favourably’ about how the home’s team handled the water leak.

“The plans of care we saw were well written, person-centred documents, which provided the staff team with guidance about people's needs and how these were to be best met,” it said.

“Feedback from people and relatives we spoke with was positive. One person said, "It's a good atmosphere here. We are really well looked after and supported by the deputy manager and staff.

“Most relatives commented favourably about the provider's actions and support at the time of the water leak.

“Some were unhappy with the response but most said the provider and staff had tried to protect the interests of people in challenging circumstances.”

Rob Noel, interim manager at Hollybank, welcomed the report and said his team is working on the improvements outlined in the report.

“We fully welcome the content within our latest CQC report from our unannounced visit in May 2022, we greatly appreciate Hollybank’s overall rating of Good and are working on improvements highlighted in the report based on the requires improvement rating received under the safe  standard,” he said.

“We note that the report states that the inspection, in part was conducted on the back of the environmental issues that the home had experienced and that it concludes that the service could not have foreseen these issues in any event.

“We are immensely proud of our residents, relatives, staff and management who worked tirelessly throughout the very difficult situation we found ourselves in when the home was temporarily decanted due to the power failure, we would also like to thank the members of the local community in Arnside who without judgement offered us such fantastic support during this period.”