By John Wimperis local democracy reporter: A council working group is calling on Bath and North East Somerset Council to keep respite care home Newton House open until October while the council goes out to tender for a new respite care service.
The facility on the edge of Bath is the only place in the area where people with severe care needs who live with their families can access respite care, a short stay away from home so their full-time carers can have a short break. But in November 2024, the council and care provider Dimensions which runs the home announced that it would be closing as it had become unaffordable.
After an outcry from parents, the closure was put on hold until the end of January 2026. Now three options of what the council can do have been drawn up and will be presented to council’s scrutiny panel on children, adults, health and wellbeing on Monday June 17.
Option one is for Dimensions to continue to run a respite care service at Newton House beyond January 2026, option two is for the council to run a respite service in a council building as both landlord and provider, and option three is for the council to go out to tender for a new respite service from the external market.
A report going before the meeting said the “emerging preferred option” of the working group, which includes four representatives of the Newton House families, was option one followed by option three. This would mean keeping Newton House open until October 2026, when the contract is due to expire, while the council goes out to tender to find a new respite care service.
The report said: “Dimensions has agreed costings for 2025/26 financial year. We are finalising the preferred option with the provider utilising contractual provisions in place.”
At a previous meeting of the scrutiny panel on April 14, the council’s director of adult social care Suzanne Westhead said her preferred option would be for the contract to go out to tender. But families told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that they hoped the council would run the service directly if it did not continue with Dimensions.
Ms Westhead told the meeting in April: “We have no intention of going out of area. […] The plan is, geographically, it will stay within B&NES whatever the three options are.”
One major concern for families is the disruption involved in changing the respite care service. Wendy Lucas, whose daughter Rhiannon is 28 and has attended Newton House a couple of nights a week for ten years, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service in April: “They are not the kind of children who you can pick up one week and deposit somewhere else the next.
“It takes months for both the families, the children, and the providers to be comfortable they are providing the service our children need. And they are all very different.”
The people who attend Newton House are the most vulnerable people in the area, with extremely high care needs and often literally no voice of their own. Their stays at Newton House can be the only time their families can get a full night’s sleep or carry out household chores.
Although run by Dimensions, Bath and North East Somerset Council is the sole customer of Newton House. The council is under a statutory duty to assess and provide for people’s care needs, including providing respite care where required.
Newton House was originally scheduled to have been closed at the end of January this year. Families received a letter in November 2024 telling them that the service would end in just a few months time. But Keynsham window cleaner Richard Franklin, whose son Ryan Probert has an unbalanced translocation of chromosomes and attends Newton House, the alarm on Facebook.
He launched a petition now signed by almost 3,000 people, and took the issue to the council with his local councillor David Biddleston (Keynsham South, Labour). Top councillors had been unaware of the decision to close Newton House until Mr Franklin shared the news.
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