Neighbours threaten legal action over care home expansion plan

Dartmouth House, in Handsworth Wood Road, caters for adult patients with a variety of mental health problems.

The privately-owned nursing care home, run by Options for Care, currently has 15 beds but an application has been made to add an extra 13 bedrooms.

Residents of Handsworth Wood Road are challenging the recommendation to approve the plan, arguing the home is already having a negative impact on the street and that children living nearby would be affected.

The application was due to go before the council’s planning committee last week but was pulled from the agenda at the eleventh hour.

Sukhpreet and Bhupinder Rana, who live next door to the home and have two children of their own as well as two foster children, say that the language coming from the premises already has a detrimental impact on their children.

And they are worried that any extension of the home could make the area even more difficult to live in.

Bhupinder said: “I’ve got little children, including the foster children, that have to, on a daily basis, listen to the verbal abuse coming from there, the F-words and everything.

“And whenever they go in the garden the little one gets scared and runs inside, saying ‘The man is screaming at us’, and he’s even mentioned it at school too.

Investment

“The voices even start shouting and screaming in the middle of the night – at 12 o’clock he comes crying and knocking on our door saying ‘I’m scared I’m scared, there’s some man shouting out there’.”

Responding to the concerns raised by residents, a spokesman said: "The existing care home has provided mental health services for Handsworth Wood residents, repatriating services users as per NHS national strategy, for 20 years and therefore is well established in the area.

"We are now looking to make further investment in Handsworth Wood, which will bring much needed employment to the local residents and provide capacity to enable local commissioners to repatriate service users.

"Whilst we dispute the claims made, the neighbouring foster service was set up recently in full knowledge of the existence the care home.

"All matters relating to the safety and welfare of residents is regulated by the CQC; in this respect, I can confirm that our organisation has been delivering quality care to our services users across all our units in the Midlands, with every unit achieving either Outstanding or Good rating from the industry regulator.

"The last CQC inspection at the Dartmouth House resulted in Good rating in all five domains. The report to the Planning Committee finds no detrimental effect on the amenity of neighbours. The report notes there are no objections from West Midlands Police to the proposal."