Ellesmere Community Nursing Home could close
A community nursing home in Ellesmere which was set up thanks to a £1 million community fundraising drive could face closure in the new year, its operators have warned.
Talks are under way in an effort to save the Ellesmere Community Nursing Home – but trustees fear they are fighting a losing battle to keep it open.
And they revealed that proposals to have some NHS-funded beds have been turned down.
The former cottage hospital is run by a community trust after residents helped raise about £1 million to buy the building back from the NHS, and to refurbish and equip it as a registered nursing home. The home opened in 1994 following the fundraising campaign launched after the cottage hospital was closed in 1988.
But trust chairman Mike Sleigh said the home was now facing an uncertain future.
“With just eight beds, the nursing home is far too small in scale to be financially viable and sustainable," he said.
“Over the last 23 years, it has only survived financially thanks to a combination of the very energetic fund raising by the League of Friends, the annual rent received from Shropshire Council for the ground-floor day care centre and, crucially, from a considerable number of generous bequests and donations.
“Those bequests has significantly declined in recent years and the trust has had to use up virtually all its accumulated capital reserves.
“Despite every effort to cut costs and economise, the nursing home is currently facing an annual deficit of £90,000 and with no cash reserves left, we have reached the point as a Trust where we cannot continue to run it.”
“We had hoped that some sort of bed funding arrangement from the NHS could be put in place with patients who are well enough to leave hospital but not yet well enough to go home. By using our facilities it could have eased the current bed-blocking crisis in the county.
“But despite our beds being more cost effective than keeping patients in acute hospital beds, the CCG has said it is not able to assist us in saving this valuable community resource and so rural north Shropshire faces the loss of its only community nursing home provision," he said.
“The Trust is now involved in a last-ditch attempt to find other sources of income or other ways to continue providing care in partnership with other organisations.
“But if these efforts fail, there is every possibility that the nursing home will have to close early in the New Year. We are now looking at how we can help the current residents to find suitable alternative accommodation, and how we can support our staff to help them find new jobs.”
Mr Sleigh said although it was likely that the nursing home would have to close, the trust would continue to own and manage the property on behalf of the community, with the aim of finding a suitable alternative community use for the first-floor space.
