AN ANGLESEY care home owner is calling for an investigation into the way local authorities are using “underhand tactics” to avoid their legal obligations in the way they set fees.

Glyn Williams, who runs the Gwyddfor Residential Home at Bodedern, claims Anglesey County Council and other North Wales authorities are underfunding care homes and failing to comply with a Welsh Government Social Services and Well-Being Act.

Mr Williams, who bought the residential home after retiring from the military after 25 years of service with the RAF, is battling to keep the home Covid-free, using his training in nuclear, biological and chemical warfare to create a three-stage decontamination unit at the entrance.

But he says he despairs at the way the Anglesey Council and the other local authorities are operating when it comes to setting fees and keeping them low.

According to Mr Williams, he is so concerned that he is calling for a Welsh Government inquiry into the way they go about determining fee levels.

Mr Williams spoke out after Care Forum Wales, which represents nearly 500 social care providers, presented a “terrible ten” local authorities with Cheapskate Awards for paying the lowest care home fees in Wales amid the coronavirus crisis.

They revealed the biggest difference between the highest and lowest weekly fee per person is more than £12,000 a year – equivalent to nearly £500,000 in a care home with 40 residents over a 12 month period.

The “league table of shame” showed that the providers in Anglesey were paid £576 a week per person for residential care while those in Cardiff were paid £737.89 – a difference of more than £8,400 a year per resident.

According to Mr Williams, the huge gulf between the top and the bottom payers was evidence of an unfair post code lottery which was threatening the well-being of the nation’s most vulnerable people and the future of social care in Wales.

He said: “Our standard weekly fee for care at Gwyddfor is £789.37 this year, or £112 per night. That may sound a lot but what standard of hotel would you get for that?

“We provide a fully inclusive service including four meals a day, all the tea and coffee a resident wants, 24-hour room service, entertainment, transport and free drinks from our residents’ bar. And add to that our highly trained and professional care staff providing round-the-clock specialist dementia care.

“I notify the Authority of my standard fee every year, a fee that we work out using a recognised funding toolkit, and have informed them I simply cannot admit anyone to our home for less than this.

“Their normal funding rate for residential care is £576 per week, which works out at £82 per night. This leaves an additional cost to the authority, which they can recover by various means, so long as it complies with the Social Services and Well-Being Act.

“But authorities across North Wales appear to be working together to drive down the fee level that they are willing to fund, in order to fit their budgets.

“Providers like us have been frustrated for years by the underhand methods which the authorities use to recover, or avoid these additional cost.

“I’ve had meeting after meeting trying to get this sorted out but they are simply not prepared to follow the legal guidance, because, in truth it will cost them too much.”

He added: “Methods employed to avoid the additional costs include a failure in providing a real choice of accommodation. They tell families they can’t go to a chosen home unless they pay the additional cost even if the authority has no other placements available.

“They allow previously ‘needs assessed’ self-funding residents to pay for their care out of their protected £50,000 savings and do not enter into agreements with third-parties before charging them the additional cost.

“They set arbitrary fee levels which take absolutely no account of an individual’s care and support requirements. They avoid financial assessments and call people self-funders when they are clearly not or shouldn’t be .”

“One of our residents is a previously self-funded lady who has recently qualified for help towards the cost of her care.

“The authority informed me via email they had asked the family to submit financial records to prove they could not make a third-party contribution towards the cost of their loved one’s care.

“I found it shocking as there is, in my opinion, no legal document which requires a family to be means-tested to support a family member in this way.

“This appeared very irregular to me, so I made further enquiries with the family and discovered they had not been asked. It appears this was simply a ploy to try and get me to reduce the additional cost to the authority.

“The authority have done a subsequent backtrack on this one and are now, thankfully, paying our full standard fee."

He added: “In the past, we at Gwyddfor Residential Home have reduced the additional cost to the authority in good faith and in attempt to develop a true partnership approach for the good of all on Anglesey.

"I have notified the council we simply can no longer sustain these reductions. I have also asked for all existing residents with previously reduced additional costs, to be increased to what the council would have paid had we not agreed a reduction. In other words to the equivalent cost of a new admission.

“This appears to be in accordance with the code because it states the code of practice on charging must apply equally to both existing and new placements made by the Authority but I’m not holding my breath.”

Care Forum Wales are calling for an urgent national action plan to tackle the “unfair and unjust” post code lottery of fees in Wales.

An Isle of Anglesey County Council spokesperson responded to claims made by Mr Williams, by saying: “We set our fees based on a regional fee modelling tool used consistently as a base for fees across North Wales. We understand that this is a difficult time, and continue to discuss ways in which we can support providers.

“We fully support the need to protect staff and residents in accordance with Welsh Government Guidelines.”