Protests over care home closures

Rehabilitation and dementia residential care will still be provided by the council

Industrial action could be called over a Hampshire council's decision to close two elderly residential care homes.

Protesters gathered outside a meeting of Southampton City Council, where it was agreed to shut the Birch Lawn and Whitehaven Lodge homes.

The decision means that new private accommodation will have to be found for 62 residents, while 74 council social care jobs could be at risk.

The council said it could provide cheaper care in the independent sector.

The authority estimates it will save £500,000, and another £400,000 on the repairs needed to the homes in the Sholing and Millbrook areas.

But the decision on Monday evening prompted angry reactions.

We know we can deliver care in the community by using the independent sector Councillor Ivan White

Terry Hinton of the Unite union said a meeting could be called on whether to ballot council social care staff over industrial action.

The council said it would redeploy the 74 staff affected, but Mr Hinton predicted there would be compulsory redundancies.

"To look at redeployment over the coming year - it's not going to happen," he said.

"They [the council] said demand was going down, but when this process started Birch Lawn had a waiting list."

'Plain wrong'

Southampton will retain four council-run elderly care homes, three for dementia care and one for rehabilitation care.

However government minister and Southampton Itchen MP John Denham said he opposed the plans.

"I think that these closures, and the way they have been handled, are just plain wrong," he wrote on his website.

Councillor Ivan White, the city's cabinet member for adult social care, told the BBC: "We know we can deliver care in the community by using the independent sector.

"Although people may disagree with this I hope people help us to help people move with as little disruption as possible."

He added that residents would be moved over the next 18 months once suitable accommodation was arranged.