Senior councillor calls for review of long term care home contracts in Milton Keynes

Nigel Long (Bletchley West) made the call at a meeting on Wednesday after noticing that Milton Keynes Council has an annual target of admitting 500 older people to residential and nursing care homes.

The report to the scrutiny management committee showed that the council has been exceeding that number for nearly a year.

Former cabinet member Cllr Long told his colleagues that he is “hostile” to using residential care instead of community based care.

But he said MK had been locked in an arrangement set up by Buckinghamshire County Council since 1996.

“I am desperate to get us out of this,” he said. It has been an issue for him for for many years.

But Conservative deputy leader Cllr Alice Jenkins (Danesborough & Walton), who chairs the council’s health and adult social care scrutiny committee, said she had no real concerns about the number.

“It is based on need,” she said. “I think this is ideological rather than anything else.”

Lib Dem Cllr Jenni Ferrans (Monkston) said for many elderly people, living on their own can be a “pretty grim experience”. And the actual number was just 0.2 per cent of the population.

Cllr Long admitted that care homes can be the right solution, but for him it is ideological “because I believe in the concept of independent living.

“The issue is have we got too much of an emphasis on care homes.

“Their biggest investors are hedge funds, and they are not doing it for charity,” he added.

Chairing the scrutiny management committee Cllr Keith McLean (Cons, Olney) asked for the issue to be considered by the group that plans the work of the health and adult social care scrutiny committee.

Cllr Jenkins said it could be considered but her committee already has some “huge things to scrutinise.”

She added that it is more a policy driven matter which is councillor code for Cllr Long to raise it within the Labour party.