Wolverhampton day care move will save £1.1m by 2015

Councillors are due to rubber stamp plans to "decommission" Warstones Resource Centre despite a 6,500-signature petition calling for it to be saved.

Wolverhampton City Council has said that 33 per cent of the respite care beds are empty.

It comes as the authority is drawing up £68 million of cuts over five years because of reductions in Government grants.

A total of 61 people work at Warstones Resource Centre and the council has pledged to try to find work elsewhere for any who are affected.

The plan is to transfer day services to private providers, along with those at Bradley Resource Centre, and to move respite services to Merry Hill House in Merry Hill and Nelson Mandela House in Pendeford. Seven dementia respite beds will go to Blakenhall Resource Centre.

The changes at Warstones will save £400,000 in the coming year and a further £700,000 in 2014/15. A further £50,000 will be saved this year by moving services from Bradley. The move is set to be agreed by the council's Labour cabinet next week.

Campaigners today said they had not been listened to. Bill Baugh, who runs art classes for pensioners at Warstones Resource Centre said: "It's disgusting.

"The need for respite care is going to grow as the population ages. Thousands of people wanted to keep this open. There has been no regard for democracy."

Wolverhampton South West MP Paul Uppal said: "I have heard and understood the council's points on this but it is being very dismissive of the views of more than 6,500 people who signed a petition."

But Councillor Steve Evans, who is in charge of the overhaul of adult care services, said: "The reality is that we have a lot of spare capacity across all of our in-house services. These are city-wide services. If we do nothing the services will end up closing."