60,000 OAPs face losing their homes if firms go bust

Cash crunch looms as the profits dry up

- Alan Selby, Chris McLaughlin and Dan Warburton

CARE homes could collapse within weeks as they struggle to meet the soaring costs of protecting residents against the coronavirus pandemic.

Up to 60,000 vulnerable OAPs could be left homeless if the owners go bust.

And the 500,000 care home residents across the UK, mostly frail and in poor health, face an uncertain future.

Just five weeks after the Sunday People warned that the sector was a ticking time bomb, we can now reveal that…

OWNERS are scrabbling to find enough cash to keep going.

THE COST of PPE equipment has soared.

THE WAGE BILL has shot up because homes have had to employ costly agency staff to replace sick workers.

INCOME has plunged because so many residents have died of Covid-19 and others have been removed by fearful relatives.

MAJOR care home providers who were already struggling before the crisis are now seeking government bailouts and say the situation in the sector is unsustainable.

One desperate independent owner, Anita Astle, who runs Wren Hall in Nottingham, told the Sunday People: “I wouldn’t be surprised if we can just manage to carry on for six to eight weeks.

“We then make 46 people homeless, we then make staff jobless.

Fearful

“I lose my home, my family loses their home. It is that dire, and it’s that dire because our funding is that tight.”