A Chippenham care home has been given an inadequate rating by the Care Quality Commission.

Ashgables House was spot checked by the watchdog and has been put in special measures as a result.

This means the home has to up its game in six months or risk being closed down.

In the report published in April, it said the inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received about the management of a Covid outbreak at the service.

The concerns included infection prevention control measures and low staffing levels.

Sixteen out of the 21 residents had tested positive for Covid 19 at the time of the inspection.

Ashgables House at Oak Lodge Close is a residential care home run by Allied Care, providing accommodation and personal care for up to 26 people living with diagnoses including mental, physical health and learning disability needs.

Inspectors said people were not being appropriately protected against risks and action had not been taken to prevent the potential of harm.

At the time of this inspection in January this year the service did not have sufficient levels of trained staff to meet people’s needs.

It said PPE was not being stored properly, that there was unsafe infection prevention control and that cleaning was not up to scratch.

Fourteen of the 23 staff had not been given updated infection control information.

Staff told inspectors that they had not felt supported during the pandemic.

One said: “I always use PPE and there has been enough for everyone, but I have not felt supported during the pandemic, not at all.

"I have not felt safe because some of the staff are not always following PPE guidelines.”

Internal audits did not reflect an overview of incidents in the service in considering patterns and future prevention measures. For example, one person had left the service unsupervised eight times during 2020 and 2021 and made repeated other unsuccessful attempts to leave.

One staff member said: “It has been very stressful trying to cope with [person’s name] leaving and the challenging behaviour. The main issue was that when they ‘left’ the manager would tell the staff to go out and bring them back.”

The staff added this should have been done by the police and that some days they dreaded coming into work as they were always going out to try to bring the person home.

The majority of regular staff were off having tested positive for Covid-19 and the provider had failed to source staffing by other means in order to run the service safely.

During the outbreak the manager resigned.

A health care professional told the CQC: “The general consensus is that at times the home appears understaffed when there appears to be a lot of noise and commotion from residents requiring some form of assistance.”