102-year-old appeals against eviction

Rose Cottle delivered her protest to Downing Street.

A 102-year-old woman has appealed to Prime Minister Tony Blair to prevent her being evicted from a residential care home.

Rose Cottle said it was "really stupid" to allow the Borehamwood Care Village, in Hertfordshire, to close.

As many as 50,000 care home places have been lost in the last five years.

The owners of Borehamwood Care Village say the home has lost £3m in 10 years, and blame a lack of government funding for the crisis in the care home sector.

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A spokesman for Mr Blair said the prime minister had "every sympathy" with Miss Cottle's plight.

He said from 2003/2004 there would be an extra £1.5bn per year going into old people's services.

Miss Cottle was taken along Downing Street by her nephew Barry Cottle to deliver a petition of more than 5,100 signatures against closure of the home.

The retired teacher, accompanied by family, friends and fellow residents were in Number 10 for a matter of minutes before emerging back into the rain.

'Worrying'

Miss Cottle said she did not meet the prime minister, but stressed: "I expect Mr Blair is a very busy man. I hope he will keep our home open.

"I haven't been badly treated yet - I trying to hold it off.

"It is worrying. These old people are only going to clog up the hospitals if there aren't enough rooms for us.

"There must be lots of places like this where homes are closing down and people don't know where they are going to go."

We will chain ourselves up like the Suffragettes

Cllr Martin Heywood

Earlier, she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I am very old, I'm older than the Queen Mother, and I don't want to be turned out of my home.

"This home has only been up a few years, it's an excellent place, all the facilities in it are exactly what the government is now demanding, so it's really stupid to pull such a place down.''

The closure would leave Miss Cottle homeless for the second time in three years. She sold her own home to pay for the care.

Martin Heywood, the mayor of Elstree and Borehamwood, said he feared another move could be the death of the residents.

"We will chain ourselves up like the Suffragettes to try to stop this home closing because I am sure a lot of them won't make it in the move."

Inadequate funding

Sheila Scott, chief executive of the National Care Homes Association, said 70% of pensioners in residential homes such as Miss Cottle's were state-funded and the government did not pay enough to cover their care.

She said 15,000 places were lost in residential homes in 1999 and a further 15,000 in 2000, due to lack of funding.

Barry Cottle said the final decision to close her home had not been reached and a proposed redevelopment was still subject to planning permission.

"We will have to find her alternative accommodation," Mr Cottle said.

"It seems to me that this really isn't the right way for a decent civilised society to be treating its elderly people. It's just wrong."

A government spokesman said Hertfordshire local authority has pledged to find Miss Cottle alternative accommodation.

Professor Patrick Carr, operations director of Assured Care Centres, which owns Borehamwood, said company directors had wanted to sell the home as a going concern but had been unable to find a buyer.

"The nub of this problem is that the vast majority of people in care homes, in nursing homes, are publicly funded, and the amount of money which the government gives to local authorities to pay those fees is inadequate," he said.

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