POTENTIAL care home residents will soon be seeing stars in a pioneering scheme being piloted on the Fylde Coast.

Lancashire Care Association is conducting trials of a new star system designed to classify rest homes according to their facilities and standards.

Blackpool care home owner Frank Hessey, chairman of the association, said: "This is a system that the industry has been crying out for over a long period of time.

"Members of the LCA already provide very high standards of care, but such standards are not consistently applied elsewhere in the industry.

"As a result, social services departments who purchase the services, and members of the public who use them, have no independent means of measuring the standard of one home against another."

He hoped the system would help drive up standards by identifying weak areas needing investment.

It would also be a marketing tool and enable local authorities to assess whether they were getting value for money.

"At last there will be a simple and reliable way of knowing the standards of care people can expect when choosing a home," said the association.

The scheme is being promoted by Blackpool Council, which as a newly-founded unitary authority, is responsible for care homes.

Blackpool social services director Steve Pullen recently investigated a similar scheme in Brighton.

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