SOUTHPORT
8 August 2018
Work starts to fill huge hole in the ground
The hole on Lulworth Road
WORK has now started on fixing a huge sinkhole which opened up on Lulworth Road 10 days ago. The hole, around three metres by two-and-a-half metres and around a metre deep, appeared on Sunday, July 29 close to where it meets Waterloo Road and the road has remained closed since. United Utilities told the Champion that they plan to reopen the road in time for the Southport Flower Show, which takes place from Thursday, August 16 to Sunday, August 19. Residents on nearby Grosvenor Road, where traffic is being diverted, have flagged up concerns including drivers having no regard for the 20mph speed limit, increased noise, having to keep cats indoors due to fears of fast drivers, and their cars being damaged.
Vol 25 l Issue 32
CONMAN’S CARE HOME IS CLOSED CQC shuts Barton Park ‘urgently ’ after damning report says residents were at ‘serious risk of harm’
Divert A spokesperson for Sefton Council referred the Champion to United Utilities, who said: “We’ve been assessing and making preparations to repair the sewer ever since the sinkhole was reported. It’s a large sewer 450mm in diameter which is broken in two places so it is quite a complicated job. We have needed to divert the waste flows into a temporary overground pipe and then empty the broken section before we could start to dig. “However we got underway this week and hope to be able to complete the repair and re-open the road by early next week. It’s really inconvenient for people so we are working as hard as we can. Once the work is complete we’ll carry out extra inspections to see if there is more we can do to prevent problems like this in the future.”
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A notice at the entrance to Barton Park which appeared last weekend
THE care home at the centre of a £4m fraud case which ended with its crooked owner being jailed for 21 years, has been forced to close. Barton Park was shut ‘urgently ’ at the weekend after an inspection warned residents were ‘at serious risk of harm.’ Last week, The Champion revealed that the luxury care home had been banned from taking on new residents, but in a new twist, the CQC confirmed that they took urgent action to close the home on Friday, August 3. The watchdog said the ‘quality of care’ at the home had ‘deteriorated significantly ’ and the management at Barton Park were unable to make quality improvements. A full report by the CQC is due to be published in the next few weeks. A notice in the window of the door simply reads: ‘Barton Park is no longer a nursing home and has ceased trading.’ David Barton, 64, the former director of Barton Park Nursing Home on Oxford Road, was convicted last month of steal-
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Oar-some Georgia!
Report by Danielle Thompson ing and defrauding six residents of more than £4million and he was jailed for 21 years. His actions were described by the judge as ‘despicable’ telling Barton he was one of the most dishonest men he had ever come across and ‘morally bankrupt.’ The Care Quality Commission (CQC) moved to protect the residents once the discovery of the fraud was alleged and in February 2016, they formally notified the provider of their decision under Section 31 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 to impose restrictive conditions. Sefton Council had since moved all of the local authority funded residents at the home to alternative accommodation and spoke to all of the residents and their families remaining at Barton Park or arranged for them to have independent advocacy if they wished. Continued inside
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