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A charity’s plans for a multi-million pound development are “excessive and unacceptable” according to a council report. Hall Grange residential home, in Shirley Church Road, was bought by the Methodist Society in 1923 and has been a care home for the elderly ever since. Proposals had been drawn up to knock down the 36-bed home and replace it with a larger,updated, version with better facilities. The new development would house 62 people plus 37 self-contained flats for elderly people on the seven-acre site.

June Whitworth, from North Somerset, and her family faced a problem familiar to thousands of people across the UK when her 88-year-old father-in-law needed residential care: how to pay for it. “The fact that people are living so much longer means that although they might not have much specifically wrong with their health they can find it difficult to do some of the things that they used to do,” says Whitworth. “When my father-in-law decided he needed to go into a care home we got advice about what was the best option.”

A village-based charity has won the regional round of a competition acknowledged by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown as Britain’s business Oscars. The White Horse Care Trust, which houses and cares for 73 adults with severe learning difficulties, achieved top place in the Wales and West Country section of the National Business Awards health and safety category. Its offices are in the village of Wroughton in Swindon.

An elderly carer has warned that a massive hike of more than 900 per cent in some social care bills in West Sussex could force vulnerable people to cancel the help they desperately need. Sid Ward, a 73-year-old pensioner from Haywards Heath who is a full time carer to his disabled wife Kathleen, said: “For the last two years I have been paying £111.72p a month for two or sometimes one person to come in the morning and at night to help me. “But now I’ve received a letter from West Sussex County Council’s Financial Services Department telling me the cost will go up to £1084.20p a month – that’s £250.20 a week. I’m cancelling the help I get because I can’t afford it.”

{mosimage} A Hospital for people with learning disabilities, at the centre of an investigation into patient abuse, will close. The Cornwall Partnership NHS Trust, which runs Budock Hospital, near Falmouth, was criticised in a report for “widespread institutional abuse” of patients. The report, part of an inquiry by the Healthcare Commission and the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI), was published this month, describing years of abusive practices, “underlying problems that have never been addressed” and the failure of senior trust executives to face up to concerns.

Multiple sclerosis sufferers have been offered hope of a normal life after doctors pioneered a wonder drug treatment. A five-year study, due to be published in August’s Journal of Neurology, found that patients with the aggressive form of MS had a reduced relapse rate of 90% under the regime. The drastic reduction means that patients who would have faced bedridden lives will now be able to work and raise families uninterrupted.

Oxfordshire’s social services are creaking at the seams because of the NHS funding crisis, councillors claim. Conservative county councillors are set to complain to the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust that changes to its services are putting the social care department under extreme pressure. On Tuesday, members of the Tory-run council’s cabinet called for a halt to cuts in community-based NHS services. They were told that the knock-on effects meant the council had already spent £250,000 more on social care at this stage of the financial year than projected. It is almost certain this figure will more than double by the end of March next year as demand for council-run services grows due to NHS cuts.

John Reid wants to call in the army to deal with young offenders to “provide structure to their lives”, according to leaked internal Home Office emails. He also believes that offenders sentenced to community punishments should demonstrate their “penance and contrition” and be put in uniform so they can be seen to be repaying the community. The leaked emails reveal the new home secretary’s highly punitive agenda and the fact that he wants to go even further than the 24-point “get tough” criminal justice package he unveiled on Thursday.