Cuts rethink buys time for care homes

The planned sale of Newark’s Woods Court care home will be delayed after Nottinghamshire County Council announced changes to its proposed budget.

All 13 of the council’s homes, which also include Bishops Court, Boughton, will now be retained for a year.

The leader of the Conservative-led council, Mrs Kay Cutts, said they wanted time to find the right buyers and were looking to sell only to charities or not-for-profit organisations.

However, Mrs Cutts could not give any long-term guarantees.

“I don’t think there are any long-term guarantees for anything, let alone any care homes we might sell,” she said.

When asked about the possibility of homes being sold in the future if they became too expensive to maintain, Mrs Cutts said: “When your business is running care homes they will see it as a care home, not a property site.”

She said people no longer planned to go into residential care homes but preferred to stay in their own homes.

As a result, she said the council was investing more in care schemes, where people lived in sheltered housing.

The council has decided not to cut £150,000 from its £250,000 community transport budget.

Instead, there will be a full review of the service in response to feedback from the budget consultation, which ends today.

Earlier this week the council had 2,086 responses and 3,847 signatures from petitions, although this was expected to increase slightly.

The consultation began in November amid controversy over planned cuts to services for the elderly, young people, and the disabled.

Mrs Cutts said: “Far from making cuts, we are spending £8m more this year.”

She said they had reallocated money to pay for services for the most vulnerable and were asking people to make a modest contribution.

She said they had no regrets in making a pledge to freeze council tax.

“We realise younger people are having a great deal of difficulty paying their bills. I think it’s time we took consideration of everybody,” she said.

People in Ollerton were outraged by plans to cut funding for out-of-school and community activities at the Dukeries College by £407,000.

The council will phase the cuts over three years rather than two, so 25% — or £101,750 — will be cut next year instead of 50% as previously planned. There will be a 50% cut the following year, and a further 25% the year after.

In light of recent bad weather the council has decided, rather than saving £50,000 from the gritting budget, to spend an extra £50,000.

It also plans to cut the welfare rights service budget by £150,000 instead of £250,000, while the increase in meals-on-wheels prices will be 65p, not £1.60.

The council needs to find £28.7m in savings from next year’s budget rather than the £33.3m originally expected.

The extra £4.6m has come from a number of sources, including a £1m underspend on the Building Schools For The Future programme, an extra £300,000 in the grant from central government, a £1.8m saving because of a national public sector pay freeze, and extra council tax of up to £11/2m from homes built.

The new proposed budget is due to be agreed at cabinet on February 3 and will be debated by the full council on February 25, when the final version will be agreed.