‘Don’t let profit come before our care’

Iain Dalton, Leeds and West Yorkshire Socialist Party

Kirklees Labour council thought it had finally washed its hands of the two specialist dementia care homes it currently owns and runs, with a vote to privatise them. But families of residents and Unison, the union representing the workers, showed their determination to keep fighting, with a 30-strong public meeting on 13 December.

Videos of families and messages from residents at Claremont House in Heckmondwike and Castle Grange in Huddersfield demonstrated how vital both homes are, as well as the horrors of understaffed, corner-cutting private homes they’d previously been at. One resident pleaded: “Don’t let profit come before our care”.

The council has hid the identities of the five new possible private providers under ‘commercial confidentiality’. But the campaign has named them. Only two of the five run elderly care homes in Kirklees, and one has no experience of running care homes at all!

Councillor Jo Lawson is chair of the council’s health and adult care committee, a member of the Kirklees Community Independents group, and one of three councillors at the meeting supporting the campaign. She said staff are being “treated as an asset to be disposed of”. Opposition councillors are ‘calling in’ the decision to privatise the homes.

Kirklees Unison is balloting its members in the care homes for strike action. With privatisation, the workers could lose continuity of their West Yorkshire Pension Fund. The workers successfully beat closure in 2023.

Socialist Party member Angela Waller is the lead Unison steward liaising and organising with the workers affected. She was quoted in a BBC article, saying: “The thought of working for a private provider was ‘filling the staff with dread’, as they were ‘worried about their pensions and terms and conditions’”.

No more cuts

The independent anti-cuts councillors can bring the community and trade unions together to oppose all of Labour’s cuts. Labour doesn’t have a majority. They’ve already had to climb down over bin reductions, a week after proposing cuts.

Campaigners are determined to continue the fight, and exhaust every angle of opposition possible, including challenging councillors who support privatisation at the next elections in 2026.