DEVASTED staff and elderly residents at a Rossendale nursing home were facing an uncertain future today after being told it will close on Christmas Eve.

Receivers who took control of Rowell Grange Nursing Home in Waterfoot two years ago pulled the plug when a £135,000 sale fell through on Friday.

The news has left staff and families with loved ones at the home frantically trying to find them a place at an alternative home before Christmas Eve, when more than 20 employees are due to receive their redundancy notices from KPMG Corporate Recovery.

Receiver and KPMG partner Mike Seery said the company had consulted Lancashire County Council's social services department about the move.

He went on: "We have kept the home open for two years because we had a potential purchaser but he has just issued a new set of conditions we cannot comply with so the sale has fallen through.

"As the home is losing a lot of money and nobody is funding it we went to the local authority and asked them what they wanted to do. They decided we should shut it before Christmas rather than after and we agreed."

Maggie Kyme, one of a number of qualified nurses who works at the Woodlea Road home, said everyone was devastated by the news.

"We are all extremely upset. This is a small home and some of the residents and staff have been here for years. They just keep saying 'Why us? Why now? Why this week?'

"I am on autopilot at the moment. We are all just trying to make sure the residents are sorted out and probably, once that has happened, I will crawl into a corner somewhere and collapse. "People don't want to go. It is like a family here. Christmas is a bad enough time for elderly people anyway without having to grieve for the loss of their home and friends. It's absolutely awful."

A spokesman for Lancashire County Council said they were working to find alternative accommodation for all 16 residents, who include a woman of 101, and hoped to have them relocated by Thursday.

Mr Seery said he had given the authority until January 4 but that the home could not remain open any longer unless a buyer came forward.

He went on: "We didn't want to move people before Christmas but took the advice of the local authority who said they would rather get people settled so there was no uncertainty. We couldn't keep it open. Who would pay for it?"

Mrs Kyme said staff and families were trying to get people into the homes they wanted to go to but added that residents would have to go where there was a free bed.

Another member of staff, who did not wish to be named, added: "Everyone is completely devastated. It is snowing and bitterly cold and they are all packing up their belongings to go."

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