Staff and families have lost their fight to persuade a council to keep control of its last care home.
Sold
Bonnyton House in Busby, East Renfrewshire was sold as part of a cost cutting initiative, with £340,000 raised towards the targeted amount of £20 million.
The council offered numerous assurances to its residents, stating that fees would remain the same once the business was transferred to ownership under Puneet Gupta and Sharda Poddar. It has also offered to match pension contributions by new owners for staff for the next 3 years.
These have been rubbished by local campaigners who argue that the council have put “cost before care” and haven’t explored any other options or alternatives to the deal.
Against
Bonnyton currently provides care for 28 residents and has 6 respite beds. A son of one the residents, Alan Smillie, was part of group of family members who put forward a plan to turn the 6 respite beds into places in the care home that would provide a significant boost to the income of the care home. He said: “It was all done on a financial basis. However the financial argument doesn’t hold out. They were charging £4.50 a day for respite care…the council appointed a firm to evaluate services who calculated this would actually cost around £141 per day. It was a heavily subsidised service.”
Mr Smillie, stated that as they received around 60-70 clients in a week it was costing them around the half a million pound mark a year, and claims in order to transform the respite beds into permanent resident places, wouldn’t have cost a lot of money or taken a lot of time.
He claimed: “The great thing about Bonnyton was that it didn’t differentiate between those who could afford to pay and those who could not, trying to get someone who can’t afford to pay into a private care home in East Renfrewshire is near impossible.”
Defence
East Renfrewshire Council have defended their decision, and claimed they did everything they could to ensure the best possible outcome for residents. They also stated that they delayed the selling process to ensure that campaigners had enough time to submit their proposal and have it examined by an external agency.
A spokeswoman for East Renfrewshire Council said: “We are confident that the deal will protect the long term future of Bonnyton House.”
