Medway Council Explores Options for Its Own Care Home Development
Medway Council is looking into building a care home to address local shortages
Medway, Care Home, Council, Health, Nursing
Medway: So, it looks like Medway Council is thinking about building its own care home. They’ve noticed a real shortage of space in existing homes, which is a big issue.
Right now, there are about 1,685 care home beds in Medway, but many folks are being placed in homes outside the area. The council believes that creating their own care home could help ease this problem and even boost the local economy by creating jobs.
This week, the health and adult social care committee is going to discuss four different options to tackle the shortage. One idea is to fix up some properties the council already owns, but it seems they don’t have any suitable ones for this purpose.
The second option, which seems to be the best bet, is to use some land the council already has for a new building. They’re looking at a construction cost of about £12.2 million, which they’d need to borrow. In total, the project could cost around £26.4 million over 30 years.
Another option is to buy a new site specifically for the care home, but that could set them back between £14 million and £33 million and take longer to get going. The last option is to just drop the whole idea, but with the growing need for care, that might not be the best move.
Running a care home is estimated to cost around £5.6 million a year, with staffing making up a big chunk of that. If they have 80 beds, it would cost just under £70,000 per resident annually, which is about £1,342 a week.
But if the home only fills 80% of its beds, that cost could jump to £87,000 a year, or about £1,677 a week. Still, the council thinks they could manage these costs by offering any extra beds to other authorities.
Since this is a long-term project, the council wants to make sure they really think it through. The HASC committee will review everything and make recommendations to the cabinet, who will decide what to do next. They’re just figuring out if building and running a care home is a good fit for Medway.
They’ll be discussing all this today, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens!