Revolt fear as Highland council prepares to shelve care home plan

New homes had been planned in Inverness, Tain, Fort William, Muir of Ord and Grantown-on-Spey under a previous SNP-led council.

But the present Labour-Independent-Liberal Democrat administration says the 30 million plan could be affected by public spending cuts, although some councillors in the coalition have said they will vote for the homes to go ahead.

A report to next week's council meeting was released yesterday and says there is "no economic case" for the council to build the homes when the costs will be higher than using private-sector homes.

The report from three council directors says that, while the benefits of building the homes are worthwhile, they do not justify the scale of the investment required and do not represent best value.

It adds: "There is no economic case for the council to build a new care home in any of the five locations when the resulting costs will be higher than those incurred by procurement of places from the independent sector."

The officials warned it was not an option to continue using existing local authority homes because some of the buildings were in a poor condition.

However, they said there was capacity in the independent home care market to absorb current levels of demand.

Councillors will be asked to consider the business case for each of the proposed homes and agree that views be sought on the report from the public.

At present about 14 per cent of care home places in Highland are delivered by the council and 86 per cent purchased from the independent sector.