City of York Council’s Cabinet will further consider plans to build new residential care developments on sites at Fordlands and Haxby Hall and a new care village site at Lowfield in Acomb on 15 May.

The proposals are part of the council’s ambitious long-term vision to provide high quality care to meet the changing needs of the city’s ageing population, including increased dementia care and an innovative, state of the art care village.

Members agreed to plans to close the existing elderly persons’ homes at Fordlands and Oliver House in January and all the 25 residents and staff have now smoothly moved to other – mostly council-run – homes in the city.

Detailed financial evaluation of the options available for building and running the two new homes and care village show that the most financially advantageous scenario is for all three sites to be operated by the independent sector. However, 86 per cent of people who responded to last year’s citywide public consultation on the future of the council’s care homes indicated that they were keen for the council to fund, build and operate the care homes. Just under half said that they would be happy for the council to enter into a partnership to fund, build and operate the care homes.

Taking the results of the consultation into account, together with the financial modelling, the cabinet will consider a recommendation for the council to fund, build and operate the new care home at Fordlands in Fulford and in principle to operate the new care home at Haxby Hall, subject to financial circumstances in Autumn 2013 when a final decision for that particular home is required.

However, due to the complexity of building and operating a care village * the Cabinet will be asked to support a recommendation to procure a partner through a tendering process to fund, build and operate a ‘community village for older people’ (including 90 residential care beds) on the Lowfield site in Acomb. The council’s own in-house service would be able to compete for this work alongside external providers.

Councillor Tracey Simpson Laing, Cabinet member for Health, Housing and Adult Social Services, City of York Council, said: “Ensuring that we are able to support the future care requirements of York’s ageing population is vitally important and we need to act now so we can meet the changing needs of older people now and in the future. We need to balance the views of local residents with the financial and operational implications of our decisions and will be considering all the options carefully, particularly in light of the current financial climate, before we take a final decision on the best way forward for adult care in the city.”

*There are presently no care villages in the UK that have been designed, built and operated by a local authority on its own.

Additional documents

 15 May 2012 Cabinet Report (766KB)

 Moving homes safely protocol (60KB)

This protocol explains how the council would ensure that any move is well planned and carefully managed, and how residents and their relatives would be involved in all aspects of the decision as to where they move.