Cabinet has approved closing Northampton's two council care homes over up to 24 months, Southfields House first. New admissions to both homes will stop.

Northampton’s two council-run care homes, Southfields House and Obelisk House, will close over a period of up to 24 months. West Northamptonshire Council’s Cabinet approved the plan on Tuesday evening, 10 November.

New admissions to both homes stop as the first step. Southfields House closes during the first 12 months and Obelisk House in the second phase. The decision is recorded in the council’s published summary of Cabinet decisions.

It is not final yet. Councillors can ask for it to be called in for scrutiny until 17 November. The earliest date the council can act on it is 18 November.

Updated 15 November: seven councillors have called in the decision. Scrutiny hears it at 6pm on Monday 23 November, and nothing can be carried out until then.

Updated 12 November: the GMB union has called the closures “shameful” and says it will meet workers to decide how to fight them. Details below.

What the union said

The GMB, which represents care workers, condemned the decision in a statement on 11 November. Rachelle Wilkins, a GMB organiser, said care workers, residents and their families “have been left in the dark about what this decision will mean for them”. She said the council should have invested in the homes “in the middle of a care crisis” rather than close them. She also said care workers had been given “little or no say about the plans”, and that the union would meet workers “in the coming days to decide on our next steps”. The union’s statement directs its criticism at the council’s Reform UK leadership.

What Cabinet approved

The same decision covers several other adult social care services:

  • Eleanor Lodge will be decommissioned, with support moved to commissioned supported living and home care
  • Longlands in Daventry and The Forum in Towcester will lose their council-run social and leisure services
  • Gladstone Road keeps its specialist day service, which absorbs the work now done at Olympus House
  • the Gladstone Road social and leisure service for adults with learning and physical disabilities moves to commissioned providers
  • the LIVE Community and Enablement Service carries on unchanged from No. 2 Abington Park Cottages

The decision says everyone affected “will receive an assessment and transition plan before any change to their provision”.

Why Cabinet chose a slower closure

The decision notice gives the reasons in the council’s own words. It says the 24-month timetable gives “additional time to complete individual assessments, identify suitable placements, involve residents and families, maintain safe staffing and support workforce redeployment”.

It also says the care home buildings and Eleanor Lodge “have material limitations that cannot be fully resolved without significant investment”. The Cabinet report we covered last week set those out: both homes are more than 40 years old, with no en-suite bedrooms.

The closures are part of the council’s Adults Sustainability Programme. The Cabinet report put the recurring saving across the whole review at £1,464,120 a year.

What people said in the consultation

The consultations drew strong opposition to closing the homes. In the consultation reports, 88.24% of respondents opposed closing Southfields House and 89.17% opposed closing Obelisk House.

The decision notice adds the figures for the other services:

  • the day services consultation ran from 16 June to 9 September and received 49 responses, with the strongest support for keeping services “mostly the same”
  • the specialist support consultation received 23 responses, 16 of them from people receiving support and four from family members

What it means for you

If a relative lives at Southfields House or Obelisk House, nobody should move until their needs have been reassessed and a placement and transition plan agreed. Those were among the safeguards attached to the decision. Ask the home’s manager or the person’s social worker for the named contact for the transition.

If you were hoping to arrange a place at either home, that is no longer possible: new admissions are stopping.

Cabinet handed the detailed transition programmes to the council’s Executive Director for Adults, Wellbeing and Organisational Change, working with Cllr Laura Couse, Cabinet Member for Adult Care and Public Health.