A POPULAR council-owned care home is to close after councillors agreed it was too costly to keep open.
Staff and families of residents at The Mount, in Tennyson Road, have had a tense three-month wait for a decision on the home, which cares for elderly people with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Luton Borough Council says the building is not fit for purpose and needs significant investment to bring it up to an acceptable standard. It also says there is a large number of vacancies at private care homes across the town that would give dementia sufferers ‘a significant increase in the quality of residential care’.
The home currently employs 45 people, and the council says it aims to find jobs within the authority for as many of them as possible, but that there may be some redundancies.
On Monday night, the council’s executive committee agreed with officers’ recommendations that home should close, a move that will save the council £600,000 over the next two years.
Relatives of residents mounted a campaign to keep the home open, and say they are pleased that the majority of residents are being moved to the same home, Trefoil House.
But Sandy McDowell, whose mother Violet Chater MBE, is a resident, said the whole process had been “traumatic”.
Mrs Chater was given the MBE for her services to Ramridge Primary School, where she was a lollipop lady for more than 40 years.
Mrs McDowell said: “We gave it our best shot, although I think we all knew what was going to happen in the end. The 90-day consultation period was absolute hell. Right from the start I had the vibes that it was a done deal.
“All the staff at The Mount are absolutely wonderful, they are so caring and thoughtful, really first class. We’ve been assured that there are other jobs around for them.”