Issue - meetings

To receive a report from the Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Public Health and the Corporate Director of Social Care, Health and Wellbeing and endorse or make recommendations to the Cabinet Member on the proposed decision to secure the transfer and sale of the Wayfarers care home as a going concern.

1.            Ms Holden introduced the report and explained that the County Council was confident of being able to secure a trusted provider to run Wayfarers as a care home.  She assured Members that the contract of sale would include a requirement that the purchaser undertake to continue to do this, for a term yet to be defined.  The sale was expected to take approximately twelve months to complete. Ms Holden responded to comments and questions from Members, as follows:-

a)    concern was expressed that County Council Members had not been notified of or invited to attend meetings about the proposals which had been held in Sandwich in November.  The Chairman agreed that it would have been useful for County Council Members to have had an opportunity to attend but advised that the meetings concerned had been organised by the Sandwich Town Council, so the County Council had no input into who was notified or invited. Ms Holden added that the officer team had attended and made presentations at several related meetings in Sandwich. At these meetings, the strength of local feeling and wish to retain Wayfarers as a care home had been clear, and the County Council’s drive to achieve this via a covenant in the contract of sale was supported; and

b)    concern was expressed that the County Council’s in-house unit cost across various types of social care provision was generally higher than unit costs achieved by private providers for comparative services.  The public trusted the local authority to provide care services so should continue to offer this option for those who wanted it.  Although the unit cost of local authority care services was higher, the authority had the advantage of being able to have its services formally scrutinised and be held to account for the quality of service it provided.   

2.            The Cabinet Member, Mr Gibbens, reported that he had attended a meeting in Sandwich at which it had been clear that the Town Council did not support the sale of Wayfarers as a going concern.  He sympathised that people were generally fearful of change.  It was important that older people in Sandwich should continue to have a choice of services.  He stated his commitment to securing the best way forward for Wayfarers and said he would give it all the support necessary to ensure that it would thrive.

3.            RESOLVED that the decision proposed to be taken by the Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Public Health, to:

a)    secure the sale of the Wayfarers registered care home, Sandwich, as a going concern; and

b)    delegate authority to the Corporate Director of Social Care, Health and Wellbeing, or other nominated officer, to undertake the necessary actions to implement the decision,

taking account of the comments made by this committee, be endorsed.

Mrs P Brivio and Mr T Maddison requested that their abstentions from this resolution be recorded.