THE new owners of a Wirral nursing home are hoping to turn around its fortunes after a damning inspection that saw it rated as inadequate and placed into special measures.  

Sandrock Nursing Home in Wallasey was visited in April this year with inspectors following up on improvements CQC told the home to make at their previous inspection.

The home has been rated inadequate four times and has been placed in special measures by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) since April 2021.

Instead of improvements, the areas of safe and well-led were re-rated as inadequate with the overall rating of inadequate remaining the same. 

The CQC would have responded to the concerns found at inspection with further regulatory action, however, during the inspection process Prasur Investments Limited took the decision to cancel its registration and have sold the service to FrankCare Ltd.  

The new provider is hoping to take over the service with minimum disruption for people living there with the CQC saying it will closely monitor the service as the provider changes over.

During the inspection, the CQC found seven people living at the home on Sandrock Road but no registered manager and staff could not confirm who was managing the service day-to-day.

The report read: "We found breaches of legal regulations in relation to the environment and building, safeguarding people from abuse, staffing, infection prevention and control, governance arrangements and medicines management."

The report contained numerous examples of the poor conditions inside the home. 

"Occupied and unoccupied bedrooms were in very poor condition," the report read. "There were stains, damp patches and odious stale smells in most of the unoccupied rooms of the premises. The garden area presented multiple health and safety hazards to both people and staff.

"We saw that there was damage to the eves of the building and in the eaves of the building and directly outside an unoccupied bedroom several pigeons had made nests.

"Gutters above the unoccupied bedrooms were overflowing with plant materials and there was damage to down pipes and gutters to the rear side of the building.

"In the rear side of the garden that was partially cordoned off there was pieces of timber in the rear side garden with nails sticking out. Corridors leading to occupied rooms and the medicines room had damp on the walls. This corridor had a strong odious smell of urine."

Despite the repeated issues at the home, its new owners are confident they can turn things around. 

"We have walked in and stripped the place back to bare bones," said Ronnie Ghuman, co-director of FrankCare. 

"We have had to put a new roof on and have refurbished the ground floor which has already cost £200,000. We have really gone to town on the place from the floor up and it is not just a lick of new paint."

The company have also concentrated on leadership and staff training which had been severely criticised in the past. 

In May 2024, then-manager Karen Lea was barred from the care profession following an investigation by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).

A panel found Ms Lea’s "unprofessional behaviour" had the potential to put resident’s at a real risk of harm and bring the profession into disrepute.

The panel also found Ms Lea remained liable to act dishonestly as she had not demonstrated any insight into her actions.

"Our new manager has over 30 years experience of working in Wirral," said Mr Guhan. "We have implemented brand new training schemes which staff have had to adhere to - we have only been there three months and they have had 96 hours of compliance training.

"We have even had old clients who have had a parent in there before coming back to us to put the other parent in because they are that happy with what we have done.

"We have moved mountains and it is a success story waiting to happen."