A town councillor has called for action after plans to replace Whitby’s Larpool Lane care home were given the go-ahead.
North Yorkshire Council (NYC) agreed at a meeting last week that elderly person’s homes at Larpool, and also Silver Birches in Filey, will be replaced by a new council-run Care & Support Hub in Scarborough.
The new centre, earmarked for greenfield land in the Eastfield area of Scarborough, at a cost of £16.9m, will provide specialist intermediate care as well as short and long-term specialist residential dementia care.
NYC says it will save £2.6m each year from its Health and Adult Services (HAS) budget.
However, it will see the closure of a facility which has cared for thousands of Whitby people over the years and is the only care home on the east side of the town.
Raising the issue at last night’s Whitby Town Council annual meeting as a member of the public, Amanda Smith, who represents the town’s Stakesby ward, said: “Many members will remember, seven or eight years ago, it was talked about closing Larpool Lane.
“This council took a great deal of time to ensure there was suitable provision in Whitby for elderly people. It was negotiated with the then NYCC, money raised from the sale of that land would be used to build extra care homes in the vicinity of the hospital.
“The reports says these hubs are being built at Scarborough and Harrogate. Can we follow up on that to ensure we have appropriate provision in this town for elderly people?”
NYC is now going to proceed with the business case and development of the Scarborough hub, which will be able to care for 60 people.
It is expected planning submissions will be followed by tender in August 2026 with the start of construction in June next year.
There will be 35 specialist residential dementia care beds in a purpose-built setting and 25 intermediate care beds for people discharged from hospital and needing short-term care.
NYC says the cost of care in the Care & Support hub will be “significantly lower than that charged by the independent care sector”.
Reports put in front of council decision makers said: “One of the main drivers of the pressures on HAS budgets is the requirement to purchase increasing levels of high-cost specialist residential dementia care in the independent care sector.
“This growth and change in demand for older people’s residential care is not currently addressed within our current care market. Specialist residential care for older people is scarce and expensive in the independent sector. The Council is increasingly reliant on a small group of ‘high cost’ providers for ‘specialist’ residential dementia care.”
NYC says the current Whitby and Filey homes were both built in the 1970s and require significant investment to remain safe and suitable. More than £1m has been spent on maintenance over the last four years.
In Scarborough, residential dementia placements, as a proportion of all residential care placements, have increased by 10 per cent in the last two years and is higher than the rest of North Yorkshire.
In addition to growth in demand, Scarborough is experiencing an upward shift in the acuity of care needs of people requiring residential care.
In Scarborough and Whitby, around 1,833 people are living with dementia (1.89 per cent of the population), compared with an England average of 1,370 people (1.36 per cent) per constituency.
