CABINET members are being recommended to close the Bodlondeb care home in Penparcau.

In a close vote, members of the county council’s healthier communities scrutiny committee decided by eight votes to seven to recommend to the Cabinet that the home should close by the end of March 2018.

The closure of the home was “inevitable”, councillors said, and should not be put off to allow plans for the future of residential care in Aberystwyth to be put in place.

That is despite several members of the committee insisting that closing the home without any assurances of a care facility in Aberystwyth could see Ceredigion’s biggest town left without any council-operated residential care facility.

Social services director Sue Darnbrook said with the number of vacant places at Bodlondeb and the cost of renovating the building to meet potential new regulations on room sizes, it would be “delaying the inevitable” by not recommending that the home should close. But some councillors insisted that closing the home without having any plan for the future of care services in Aberystwyth and north Ceredigion and hoping that a suggested extra care scheme at the former Plas Morolwg goes ahead was not ensuring services would be available in the future.

Cllr Hag Harris said: “I don’t think Bodlondeb is fit for purpose, but to move to close surely we have to have a better vision about what will be there for the future of provision.

“I don’t see a better vision for the community, residents and those who come from Aberystwyth. It’s easy to support closure if we see something better. What we’re not seeing is anything that’s going to be better.”

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