Almost £5million a year wasted on unoccupied beds across West Sussex care homes

The council is 17 years into a 30-year contract with Shaw Healthcare, which costs £23.6m per year and gives the authority access to 590 beds in 12 care homes across the county.

A report to a meeting of the Health and Adult Social Care scrutiny committee last Friday (July 8) said that, during some months in 2021/22, fewer than 80 per cent of those beds were used, leaving more than 100 unoccupied.

James Walsh (LDem, Littlehampton East) said: “This is frankly a devastatingly shocking state of affairs that we are paying almost £5m a year – wasted money – for beds that we’ve paid for [in] a block contract and we’re not putting clients into.

“I know it’s easy with hindsight, but we should never have got ourselves into a contract that tied us down like that over such a long period when the care market and the requirements were likely to change, have changed and have got us into this situation.”

Dr Walsh asked for an ‘extremely robust’ renegotiation with Shaw.

Alan Sinclair, director of adults & health, told the meeting that work was ‘ongoing’ in negotiations with Shaw.

He added: “This isn’t a straightforward negotiation and it will take us a bit of time to get to where we need to.”

The work will include ensuring the right type of beds are provided in the right parts of the county to meet the needs of the population.

An update is expected to be brought to the committee in the autumn, with a full report due in November.

The contract was signed in February 2005 and ends in 2035, with the £23.6m payable no matter how many of the beds are unused.

In June, the committee was told that there had been an improvement in the quality offered by Shaw.

In 2019/20, five homes were rated ‘good’ by the Care Quality Commission, three were rated ‘requires improvement’ and four ‘inadequate’.

Today, seven are ‘good’, five ‘requires improvement’ and none are rated ‘inadequate’.

A council spokesman said the impact of the pandemic had placed ‘unprecedented pressure’ on adult social care services – a situation reflected across the country.

He added: “Shaw Healthcare continues to follow the Government public health guidelines which prevent residential homes with cases of coronavirus from accepting new admissions.

“This is an ongoing situation which is still having a major impact on the care sector and has resulted in a significant reduction in the number of beds occupied through our contract with Shaw Healthcare, as reflected in the figures quoted.

“A short-term plan has been developed with Shaw Healthcare to improve our use of the contract and we are already seeing an improvement in occupancy.

“When the current residential care contract was originally agreed, contracts of this duration were common practice.

“We continue to review the contract regularly and work closely with Shaw Healthcare so that we and our residents get best value from the arrangement.

“We are committed to ensuring there is sufficient and suitable provision available to meet the current and ongoing need across the whole of West Sussex.”