One nursing home closes per week, figures show

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has confirmed a total of 73 homes cancelled their registration in the first six months of 2016, due to a shortage of nurses caused by recruiting issues.

Data showed that for 2015-2016, the number of nursing homes in England fell from 4,697 to 4,633, while the number of their beds reduced from 224,674 to 224,026, reversing the increase seen over the previous five years.

In an interview with the BBC, Andrea Sutcliffe, chief inspector of adult social care at the CQC, said: "One of the fundamental reasons is that we are seeing that homes are having difficulty recruiting and retaining nurses.

"There are about 47,000 nurses working in adult social care. There is about a nine per cent vacancy rate, which will mean they are depending on agency nurses. And over the last year a third of nurses left their job.

"So, we're having difficulty recruiting them and then we are having difficulty retaining them, and that will have a direct impact on the quality of care that people are receiving."

The CQC warned that 40 per cent of nursing homes are rated as either ‘requiring improvement’ or ‘inadequate’, while 60 per cent are rated ‘good’ and just one per cent are rated ‘outstanding’.

Frank Ursell, of the Registered Nursing Home Association, added: ”[This] ought to be concerning because the demography is telling us we have got an ageing population," he said.

"We've never had any control over the supply of nurses. so we've always had to rely upon the supply of nurses that are trained by the NHS.

"If the number of nurses they're training isn't sufficient to meet both the health and social care needs then we are going to have a problem. "

Responding to the figures, the Department of Health said it was funding a £40 million leadership programme to create more senior nurses, as well as undergraduate nurse apprentices and student nurse placements in care homes.