\n<\/p>\n
A Reform UK-led council plan to shut eight of its residential care homes has been condemned as \u201ca betrayal of local people\u201d.<\/p>\n
Days before Christmas, Derbyshire county council announced that the homes would have to close after a proposed sale fell through.<\/p>\n
The closures have prompted a backlash and have echoes of the furore in Lancashire where the Reform-led council is planning to close five care homes and five day centres and move residents into the private sector.<\/p>\n
Mick Coppin, a regional organiser of the GMB union, said the Derbyshire plans put vital services and more than 200 jobs at risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese closures are nothing short of a betrayal of local people and staff,\u201d Coppin said. \u201cDerbyshire county council did not stand before the electorate last May pledging to shut care homes.<\/p>\n
\u201cCare home residents, their families and dedicated care workers face huge anxiety about the future \u2013 just days before Christmas. It\u2019s time for the county\u2019s leadership to halt these disastrous plans and work with the community to explore alternatives to closure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Linsey Farnsworth, the Labour MP for Amber Valley, last week raised the issue at prime minister\u2019s questions in the Commons, saying that families and staff were heartbroken and called for a rethink.<\/p>\n
Keir Starmer replied: \u201cIt is deeply concerning to hear about the closure of eight Derbyshire care homes by the Reform-led Derbyshire county council. It will be hugely concerning to residents and their families, while we are making \u00a33.7bn of extra funding available to councils to fund social care.\u201d<\/p>\n
Derbyshire county council said it had been in \u201cintensive\u201d but unsuccessful negotiations with a provider to take over the running of the eight homes as a going concern.<\/p>\n
Joss Barnes, a Reform councillor who is the cabinet member for adult care, said he was \u201cdevastated\u201d by the failure of the negotiations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know this will be extremely upsetting news for all our residents and their families, as well as our hard-working care colleagues, especially coming at this time of year in the run-up to Christmas,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019d like to thank everyone for their hard work, patience and persistence and I\u2019d also like to say how incredibly sorry I am that this hasn\u2019t worked out as we\u2019d hoped and planned for.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have done absolutely everything to progress the sale, but in the end it wasn\u2019t possible. Due to commercial sensitivities, we\u2019re not able to give any more details regarding negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the council would work to support residents to find new homes.<\/p>\n
The decision to sell the homes was agreed in November 2024 when the authority was Conservative-controlled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Reform UK-led council plan to shut eight of its residential care homes has been condemned as \u201ca betrayal of local people\u201d. Days before Christmas, Derbyshire county council announced that the homes would have to close after a proposed sale fell through. The closures have prompted a backlash and have echoes of the furore in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[3920,165,1013,6085,2755,364,1436,838,2878],"class_list":{"0":"post-38808","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-betrayal","9":"tag-care","10":"tag-councils","11":"tag-homes","12":"tag-local","13":"tag-people","14":"tag-plan","15":"tag-reform","16":"tag-shut"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}