Care home chief backs closure plan

10:58am Monday 17th November 2003

WESTMORLAND and Lonsdale MP Tim Collins has met one of the bosses at national charity Leonard Cheshire to try to persuade him not to close Holehird house at Windermere.

The MP arranged a meeting with the director general of the charity, Bryan Dutton, following the announcement that the home was to shut.

As previously reported, the charity has said it cannot afford to upgrade both Holehird and another home in Garstang, Lancashire, to conform with the Care Standards Act. Instead, the charity plans to leave both homes and build a £3 million home in the Lancaster or Morecambe Bay area.

Speaking after the meeting, Mr Collins said there was good news and bad news. The good news was that Mr Dutton assured him Holehird would remain fully operational for the three years or so until it shut, and would even admit new residents. Mr Dutton also pledged to visit Holehird and talk to residents and staff.

Mr Collins said: “The bad news was he was saying that in the present plans, he’s adamant they have to go ahead with the closure. That’s partly because of Government rules and regulations that have significantly driven up their costs.” Mr Collins said there were now three years - and a General Election – in which to argue for the regulations to be scrapped.

The MP said that because Holehird was a listed building, Mr Dutton feared Leonard Cheshire would not be able to get planning consent for any changes at the house. The difficulty of recruitment, coupled with high costs for agency staff, were also cited as problems by Mr Dutton.

Mr Collins said he believed that Leonard Cheshire was closing many of its homes and moving towards providing help for people to be able to live in their own homes. He also felt that the charity was moving towards becoming more of a campaigning and advocacy body for people with disabilities.

“The final thing, which did not go down particularly well with me, again is part of a long-term strategy, that they were looking at providing assistance for disabled people in the Third World, which I am sure is a very good cause but not at the expense of people closer to home.” Mr Collins, who has already written to Prime Minister Tony Blair about Holehird, and tabled a series of parliamentary questions, is due to visit the house in a couple of weeks. He will now look into planning regulations to see if there is any flexibility to allow changes to be made at the home.