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Lancashire’s Reform-run council has been accused of “selling off the family silver” with plans to save £4m a year by closing five council-run care homes and five day centres and selling off the land.
One of the care home residents, a 92-year-old woman, said she would leave only by “being forcibly removed or in a box”.
The Reform-voting son of another resident said any move would “kill” his mother, and vowed to quit the party if the closures went ahead.
Questions are also being asked about a potential conflict of interest involving Reform’s cabinet member for social care in Lancashire, who owns a private care company with his wife.
Reform UK took control of Lancashire county council (LCC) from the Conservatives in May, winning 53 of the 84 available seats.
In June, the cabinet voted to let in Reform’s “Doge” unit of cost-cutters, but they have yet to arrive amid wrangles over data protection.
Reform says it needs to find £103m of cuts in Lancashire, and the cabinet has agreed to find adult social services savings of about £50m over 2025-26 and 2026-27. Closing the care homes and day centres could save £4.16m, LCC said.
Each year, LCC currently spends about £545m on adult social care.
Last month it launched a consultation on moving residents out of five local authority care homes and into other premises, “enhancing resident experience, while delivering essential savings”. It said more older people in Lancashire should be cared for in their own homes.
Margaret France, a Labour councillor in Chorley, said it looks like “selling off the family silver” and “opening the door to private providers”.
One of the homes is Woodlands in Clayton-le-Moors in Accrington. The council says it would need to spend £1.39m bringing it up to scratch.
Dorothy Devereux, 92, a former nurse has lived in Woodlands for 12 years. She said she was devastated by the proposals and insisted she would not leave without a fight.
“This is our home,” she said. “Where are we all going to go?” She was doubtful that housing her in the private sector would save the council any money, and said she could not go home to be cared for because she’d sold her home to pay for her fees.
She added: “I’m staying here till I’m either forcibly removed or in a box.”
Phil Price, whose mother is in Grove House in Adlington, another of the homes earmarked for closure, said: “My mum is 93. If she finds out about this, it’ll kill her.”
He said he was disgusted at what he fears is a conflict of interest involving Reform’s cabinet member for adult social care, Graham Dalton, who owns a private care company in Lancashire.
“I’m a paid up member of Reform and I’m disgusted with him,” said Price.
He voted for Reform knowing they would cut “waste”. But he said: “If there are parents who have paid into the system all their lives, worked hard for this country, if they’re ‘waste’, then we might as well just give up.” He said he would quit Reform if the homes closed.
When the care home closures were discussed at LCC’s health and adult social services scrutiny committee on Wednesday, Dalton insisted he was not conflicted.
Dalton, a registered nurse, told the committee he was a part owner of “1st for Care GB”. The company, based in Lancaster, offers private care, including 24-hour complex care and respite care. But he stressed he had “no pecuniary or non-pecuniary interest” – ie a financial or non-financial interest – in the care home closures.
He was challenged by councillors including Liz McInnes, a former Labour MP who now sits on Rossendale borough council. She said: “I’m fairly sure that on our council if someone was part-owner of a care service that would at least be counted as a non-pecuniary interest because they could potentially benefit from care homes closing.”
In August the Care Quality Commission rated Lancashire’s adult social services as “requires improvement”, finding long waiting times for services, staffing issues and “stark inequalities between the most and least deprived areas”.
