Canterbury care home residents face move after CQC action

demoduck.co.uk editorial team 2026-08-03 16:21 4 min read

Caregiver assisting elderly residents with coloring activity in a care home.

By demoduck.co.uk News Desk
Published 3 August 2026

People living at The Chase in Canterbury will be moved to alternative care settings after the Care Quality Commission took legal action to cancel the home’s registration.

The residential care home for older people, operated by Purelake (Chase) Limited, will close after the provider told the regulator that it wished to withdraw its appeal against the cancellation. The CQC said its decision will now go ahead.

The action follows a June inspection that found care had not improved since the regulator’s previous visit. Inspectors concluded that residents continued to face a significant risk of harm.

Registration cancellation will force The Chase to close

The CQC began legal proceedings to cancel The Chase’s registration after finding repeated failures in residents’ care. Purelake (Chase) Limited initially challenged the decision through the Care Standards Tribunal but subsequently indicated that it wanted to withdraw the appeal.

Cancellation means The Chase can no longer continue operating as a registered care home. Everyone living there will therefore require another placement, with the provider and local authority working together to identify appropriate accommodation.

The home remains in special measures while that process continues. This status allows the CQC to monitor the service closely and sets a defined period for required improvements and further regulatory action.

The Chase has now been rated inadequate in all five inspection areas. It was re-rated inadequate for safety, care and leadership, while its ratings for effectiveness and responsiveness fell from requires improvement to inadequate.

Canterbury care home residents face move after CQC action

Eight regulatory breaches remained unresolved

Inspectors found continuing breaches of eight regulations covering person-centred care, dignity and respect, consent, safe care and treatment, safeguarding, environmental safety, staffing and management.

A separate breach concerning the recruitment of fit and proper staff had been addressed. However, the wider findings showed that many of the concerns identified during the previous inspection were still present.

Catriona Eglinton, the CQC’s deputy director of adult social care in Kent, said poor leadership had allowed a closed culture to develop in which residents’ basic rights to dignity and safety were not upheld.

Daily care, medicines and emergency support caused concern

The CQC said some residents regularly waited as long as five hours after waking before being offered food or drink. Inspectors also reported a strong smell of urine throughout the home, despite the issue having been raised previously.

Six residents were routinely woken between 5am and 5.30am for personal care. Inspectors found no evidence that those residents had requested, agreed to or needed care at that time.

Medicines were sometimes concealed in food or drinks without staff first seeking advice from a prescriber or pharmacist. That meant staff had not established whether the method was safe or could change how effectively the medicine worked.

The home also failed to ensure that appropriately trained staff were always available for an emergency. On several occasions, nobody on duty was trained to administer emergency seizure medicine, while staff gave inconsistent explanations of how they would respond.

Two residents who remained in their rooms received only essential physical care for an entire month, according to records reviewed by inspectors. There was no recorded evidence of conversation, companionship or other meaningful social contact.

Care plans were not consistently revised after serious incidents. Following one resident’s fall, the plan was left unchanged and continued to state that the person had never fallen, without identifying measures to reduce the risk of another incident.

Previous warnings had not produced improvements

The June 2026 inspection was carried out to assess progress after breaches identified in July 2025. The regulator had instructed Purelake (Chase) Limited to make improvements, but inspectors found that most of the regulatory failings continued.

Residents’ individual preferences were also overlooked. People who said their faith mattered to them were not supported to practise it, while four residents who enjoyed gardening could not use the rear garden because it was again overgrown and locked. A relative told inspectors that weekend activities were not provided and residents were left sitting without meaningful engagement.

Residents will move to alternative accommodation

Purelake (Chase) Limited is working with the local authority to find appropriate alternative care for everyone living at The Chase. The CQC’s announcement does not specify a closure date, individual moving dates or the new settings residents will enter.

The confirmed next step is a coordinated relocation of all residents while the home remains subject to close regulatory monitoring.

Source: Care Quality Commission News

Context & actions About this article

Source check Source trail

This report separates the regulator’s confirmed findings, legal action and relocation plans from details that have not yet been published.

Checks

Checked the inspection and publication dates stated by the Care Quality Commission.
Matched the eight continuing regulatory breaches to the areas listed in the CQC statement.
Confirmed that the provider addressed the separate recruitment breach.
Confirmed that withdrawal of the tribunal appeal allows registration cancellation and clos...

Care Quality Commission Check independent coverage