Wellington House Brighton: Closure Urged Despite Objections

Brighton & Hove City Council is being asked to close Wellington House, its own day centre for adults with learning disabilities, even though most people who answered the consultation opposed it. The recommendation is set out in a report going to Cabinet on 17 September. Twenty-one adults currently use the service.

Councillors get a first look at it before that. A special meeting of the People Overview & Scrutiny Committee sits at 2pm on Friday 4 September in the Council Chamber at Hove Town Hall. It cannot decide anything. It can send recommendations to Cabinet.

The report is unusually direct about the balance of opinion. “The majority of those who responded to the consultation did not support the proposal to close Wellington House,” it says, before recommending closure anyway.

What Wellington House does

The centre sits in the Elm Grove area and opens Monday to Friday, 51 weeks a year. According to the pre-decision scrutiny report and the Cabinet paper:

• 21 adults with learning disabilities attend across the week, supported by 21 members of staff
• 8 of them have complex behavioural support needs, and some are autistic with additional communication difficulties, sensory processing differences, mental health needs, epilepsy or sight loss
• 4 more people use it as a drop-in on some days, with their own support staff
• staff are trained in positive behavioural support, and the service holds a 2020 autism accreditation from the National Autistic Society
• the same building houses more than 100 integrated staff from the Specialist Community Disability Service, plus the manager of the Cherish outreach short breaks service

The money

The saving is the reason the proposal exists. A £400,000 cut was written into the council’s budget at Full Council on 26 February, subject to consultation. The figure has since come down.

Across the rest of the council’s Medium Term Financial Plan, to 31 March 2030, the report puts the total at £1,009,689.

The per-place figures are where the gap shows most clearly. Wellington House averages £244 a day per person. The report says six other providers in the city support 134 of the 155 adults receiving day opportunity support, at somewhere between £60 a day for someone with low needs and £199 a day for those with complex needs.

The savings are not all clear profit in year one. Redundancy and pension costs for the 21 staff are funded corporately, and the report sets out three scenarios:

• a third of staff made redundant: £191,728.22
• two thirds: £383,456.44
• all of them: £575,184.66

Staff would be offered redeployment first, and the report says vacancies have been held open across adult social care and housing to make that more likely.

Where the 21 people would go

Every user has had a statutory review of their needs under the Care Act 2014, completed by 30 April. The report says a pathway has been identified for all of them:

• 16 would move to existing day opportunity providers with capacity in the market
• 2 would use a new specialist high care needs service being developed by an existing provider
• 2 need no day opportunities reprovision because their assessed need has changed
• 1 has asked for a higher Direct Payment instead of a commissioned service

Wellington House currently provides transport for 8 people. The report has no firm cost for replacing it and has assumed £25 a journey, the average some external providers charge.

The council says nobody would move until it is satisfied each person’s needs can be met locally “with at least the same quality of care”, with a six-week review after each placement and an annual review after that.

What the consultation said

The 12-week consultation ran from 14 April to 7 July. It drew 95 responses in total: 23 surveys from families and carers, 56 from other stakeholders, plus separate written submissions from organisations.

The Parent and Carer Council response, published in full in the committee papers, was gathered from more than 30 parent carers and strongly opposes the closure. Its objections include:

• the consultation looks only at the 21 current users and does not model demand from young people leaving special schools
• families have been told by alternative providers that they are at capacity, or lack wheelchair access and breakout space
• the sector’s recruitment problems mean high staff turnover, where these users need consistent, trusted staff
• closing in-house provision removes the council’s bargaining power, and provider costs will rise with inflation
• one or two failed placements ending in emergency residential care “would completely wipe out any projected savings”

The council’s own summary of the wider feedback lists the same themes: skilled and consistent staff, predictable routines, friendships and peer relationships, and the respite the service gives unpaid carers.

The report does not dispute any of that. It says the rationale still stands “notwithstanding the majority of the feedback opposing the proposal”, citing the savings required, the condition of the building and falling occupancy.

The occupancy argument

That last point is the council’s strongest card. Its own table of new day opportunity placements in the city reads:

Nobody new has been placed at Wellington House for two years, while the city commissioned 59 placements elsewhere.

The alternatives officers rejected

Six alternatives were put forward during the consultation and assessed. All were rejected:

• keep it and invest in the service: unit costs and building maintenance are called unsustainable
• use the building differently, by expanding or sharing it: no evidence demand would rise enough
• transfer it to another provider, keeping the building: TUPE would erode the savings
• a hybrid model of centre and community provision: more complexity and cost
• relocate the service intact: needs an affordable building and does not fix falling referrals
• retain a smaller council-run service: too few attendees to be viable

If closure is agreed, the disability service staff and the Cherish manager move to offices elsewhere and the building is “released for a capital receipt”, meaning it would be sold.

What it means for you

If you use the service, or care for someone who does, these are the dates that matter:

• Friday 4 September, 2pm: People Overview & Scrutiny meets at Hove Town Hall. No decision, but recommendations can be made to Cabinet.
• Thursday 17 September: Cabinet decides. The report is marked a key decision affecting all wards.

Every paper, including the full equality impact assessment and the consultation responses, is published on the committee’s agenda page. Nothing in it is confidential.

If the closure goes ahead, day support does not stop on a date. The report commits to a managed transition, with each person matched to a provider and reviewed after six weeks.

For the wider council budget picture this saving sits inside, see our guide to Brighton council tax bands and what the city charges.