Following a Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection which rated the home as inadequate, the owners of Trefula Nursing Home, based in St Day in Cornwall, made a decision that they no longer wished to run the home. As a result, Cornwall Council took the unprecedented step of purchasing the home, to help ensure the safety and wellbeing of 33 vulnerable residents.

This decision was not one taken lightly, but in recent times all councils have had to look at how they will secure and deliver services differently, and the residential care home market in Cornwall, made up of small local providers, has struggled to flourish in recent years. Trefula Nursing Home is the last dementia nursing home in the west of Cornwall, and if the council had not intervened some of Cornwall’s most vulnerable residents would have had to move to homes outside of the county.