ALMOST 30 per cent of care homes in Cheshire West and Chester have been rated as ‘inadequate’ or ‘requires improvement’ by the Care Quality Commission.

A new analysis by Independent Age has revealed that the north west is the worst performing region when it comes to the proportion of satisfactory care homes.

Of the 83 care homes in the Cheshire West and Chester region, 27.5 per cent are underperforming.

Findings shows that the north west contains five of the eight worst performing English local authorities on care home quality, with more than one in four care homes across the region performing poorly.

Janet Morrison, Chief Executive of Independent Age, said: “Older people and their families are still facing an unenviable choice between poor care homes in some parts of the country. While it is encouraging that there has been an overall improvement in quality, this masks persistent variation in the quality of care homes within each region of the country.

“The market simply does not seem to be able to drive the rapid improvement needed in many areas. While the Government seems happy to deflect all decisions about social care into the vague promise of a green paper, local authorities are having to make difficult decisions now about care in their area.

“We urgently need both Government and local authorities to demonstrate that they understand the reasons for this variation and that they have the ability to address it.”

Out of all local authorities in England, only five have seen an overall improvement year-on-year, yet they still have more than two in five care homes rated as ‘inadequate’ or ‘requires improvement’. This illustrates that, while improvement is needed, older people and their families are still struggling to find a choice of good homes

Independent Age believes the variation in care home quality is due to low levels of funding from local authorities, low pay and difficulty recruiting staff, and the lack of a good support mechanism for improving care homes that are struggling.

The care homes market is now valued at nearly £16 billion. However, social care is facing a £2.6 billion funding gap by 2019/20.