A damning report from care watchdog the Care Quality Commission today described four private care homes in Cornwall as ’grim and shoddy.’

Care was unsafe, said the CQC, at the homes run by the Morleigh Group, two of which were criticised in a BBC Panorama film on Monday.

The four homes, St Theresa’s in Callington, Elmsleigh in Par, Clinton House in St Austell (now closed) and Collamere in Lostwithiel have been rated ’inadequate’ and placed into special measures following separate inspections.

Morleigh Group owner Patricia Juleff said in a statement: ’I would like to publicly apologise for the distress that our residents, their families and our staff have felt in recent weeks.

’Over the past few weeks, the Group has undertaken a detailed review of our systems and procedures whilst fully complying with multi-agency investigations. Early in that review, staff numbers were increased in all of our homes and dismissals were made both since and prior to being notified by the producers of the Panorama programme.

’Our review has found inconsistencies in medicine control, maintenance, DBS checks and staff training that are now being addressed and we are stepping up our efforts and resources across all of those areas to improve the level of our service.

’Turning to this morning’s CQC publications, we are naturally disappointed the regulator has now adjudged the four homes to be ‘Inadequate’, despite 11 of the 20 areas assessed as ‘Requires Improvement’, with many of the findings confirming the areas we have already identified for improvement.

’Indeed, the CQC’s most recent inspections prior to Panorama – which took place as recently as this summer – find all four homes to be in the ‘Requires Improvement’ category. Further to which, our homes at Brake Manor in St Austell and Tregertha Court in Looe are currently classed as ‘Good’ and ‘Requires Improvement’ respectively.

’In many years in care, I have always acted on the feedback and recommendations from the CQC, with the view of continually improving the service the group provides to the community. I completely disagree with the view of Andrea Sutcliffe, Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care, in that we have “allowed” the services to seriously deteriorate. I will continue to focus on making necessary improvements for our residents, and I will allow my legal team to examine that comment in more detail.

’Finally, with regard to many counts of intrusion into the homes of our residents this week, I would appeal for this stop immediately to avoid any further distress at this difficult time.’