Colwyn Bay care home latest to cease business

A care home resident. Over the past six years, one in 12 care homes in England has closed down. Photograph: Alamy

Two weeks ago Nick Corney was told that the nursing home where his 89-year-old mother had been cared for over the last four years was to close, and he had just 28 days to find her a home somewhere else.

The owners of the home, Plas Isaf, in Rhos-on-Sea, near Colwyn Bay, north Wales, which cares for 21 elderly people with dementia, said it was shutting this month because it was “no longer financially viable”.

The abrupt closure has left families desperately searching for new accommodation for their relatives, in a story repeated up and down the UK as cash-strapped care providers abandon struggling businesses.

“The company served just 28 days’ notice on her,” said Corney, who lives 20 miles away in Betws-y-Coed. “Even private tenants get treated better, with two months’ notice.”

After an emergency meeting with Conwy council, a new room was secured for Corney’s mother, and she was due to move next week. But the experience has left the family distressed.

Related: English care home closures are leaving vulnerable people at risk, says watchdog

“There appears to be a serious lack of funding. The government doesn’t really want to acknowledge the scale of the crisis with dementia,” Corney said. His mother, he said, needed “elderly mentally infirm care” that could cost thousands of pounds a week. She had already exhausted her savings, and the move risked a further decline in health. “For people with dementia, the last thing they need is a change of environment, it can affect their general health badly,” said Corney.

Rosewood Healthcare Group, which runs six care homes across Wales and the north-west, bought the home Plas Isaf in August 2015 but now say it is no longer viable. According to local newspaper reports, the home will be demolished and replaced by new apartments.

In a statement Rosewood Healthcare Group said: “This has been a very difficult decision. Having taken over the home a year ago and worked hard to turn it around, sadly it is the case that it is not financially viable, so we have put in place a measured and managed closure process.”

Over the past six years one in 12 care homes in England has closed, despite growing demands for accommodation from the ageing population.

Related: Patchy dementia care puts patients at risk of unnecessary suffering, says CQC

Ros Altmann, the minister for pensions until July this year, is a fierce critic of the failure by every government to tackle the crisis in adult social care. “No political party has faced up to the issue – to do so would be to address the elephant in the room and the subsequent necessary hikes in taxation. It’s not a vote winner. All we need is a really harsh winter and our care system will collapse. It’s a massive failure of policy,” she said.

Nearly one in five people in the UK is aged 65 or over, but by 2040 that figure will be one in four. By 2025, it is estimated, 1.14 million people will be living with dementia.

David Goodfellow, of the financial advisers Cannacord Genuity, warned that few people were holding personal care plans, even though the state did not cover care costs and means testing ensured that only people with less than £23,250 in assets (including their home) would get help.

Tony Stein operates 120 care homes across the UK through his company, Healthcare Management Solutions. He said: “Lots of the independent operators in Britain are zombie homes just stumbling along. Their owners don’t want to press the nuclear button and shut down, but so many of them are on the brink.”

Many blame the higher national minimum wage for forcing up costs; others say council cuts, red-tape and building regulations, are behind the crisis.

“We’ve got a polarised market,” said Stein. “There are the top-end homes where the fees are £900 to £3,000 per week. They can afford the new minimum wage and the high costs of nursing, and still deliver the standard of care we expect. But at the other end are the ones principally funded by local authorities. Nobody is building homes any longer to satisfy that market. There’s no money in it, they can’t afford the staff and they can’t afford the training. They are no longer investing in their homes and they have a very finite horizon. We’re getting to the point where local authorities will have to be forced to do something about the fees. Until then, these operators will continue to close.”

FNC (free nursing care) payments paid by the NHS towards the cost of a place in a nursing home were raised significantly in July, jumping 40% from £112 a week to £156.25, but Stein argued that it was not enough, and would still leave homes staggering along. “The days are long gone when care operators were raking it in. Fifteen years ago it was a licence to print money but it certainly isn’t now.”