Highland care homes to stay in council hands

The leader of Highland Council yesterday gave an assurance the only work being carried out on the future of council care homes is a review of the business case for building new ones.

They will be at Burnside/Ach an Eas, Inverness, Muir of Ord, Fort William, Tain and Grantown.

Privatisation was no longer on the agenda, said Councillor Michael Foxley

He added that while one option on the care homes’ future prior to December 17 last year was an appraisal on the transfer of all homes and their operation to the private sector or to a trust, this option had been dismissed and had not been presented to the council for consideration.

The work on the business case for building the homes is scheduled to be completed by the end of this month and the aim is that a report is taken to the full council on May 13.

He said: “The clear view of the leadership was to recommend to the council that we conduct a business review of each of the five proposed projects.

“This recommendation was accepted.

“We will examine each of the projects and assess the costs and benefits of the investments so we have the information we require to decide how best to spend the funding available to us.

“We should have this information by the end of the month and we will take a report to the full council for consideration.”

Councillor Margaret Davidson, chairwoman of the housing and social work committee, said: “We are entirely focused on preparing a business case for each of the five homes.”

She said the council ran 10 residential and nine community care homes. In recent times, it had invested more than £4million on the refurbishment of Bayview House, Thurso; Seaforth House, Golspie; Dail Mhor, Strontian; Melvich Community Care Unit; Strathburn House, Gairloch; the MacKintosh Centre, Mallaig and Pulteney House, Wick and the Telford Centre, Fort Augustus.

The Press and Journal highlighted yesterday that correspondence obtained by the opposition SNP group on the council which revealed that an appraisal on going private had been considered.