Legionella in Barnet Care Homes: The 12 questions no one wants to answer

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Barnet Council is embarking on a policy called One Barnet Programme (OBP) the fact that there is nothing ‘One Barnet’ about handing over all your services to a vast number of private sector organisations is another matter.

I have been actively pursuing answers to important questions following news that 2 former council care homes (now owned by Catalyst Housing) were found to be infected by the legionella bacteria. A month later we were informed it was now 3 care homes and Catalyst had been served an improvement notice by Barnet Council.

These are the questions

1. Can you confirm whether any resident/service user/member of the public has contracted Legionella?

2. Who is responsible for monitoring the safety of the water supply in these settings?

  • Is it Barnet Council?
  • Is it Catalyst Housing?
  • Is it Fremantle?
  • Is another organisation?

 3. When and where in each of the affected homes did they discover Legionella bacteria?

4. When was the last time each setting was checked and who has the records?

5. Does Barnet Council include issues like Health & Safety in the contract monitoring process? If not why not? If yes when were these last reviewed?

6. Are risk assessments on health & safety carried out in all of the settings?

7. As part of the contract monitoring by Barnet Council are these risk assessments reviewed? If not why not? If yes when were they last reviewed?

8. As part of good safeguarding practice have other residential care homes provided by Catalyst and Fremantle been informed about the outbreak and if so have the checks been carried out in those settings?

9. What was the cause of this outbreak and what controls have been put in place to secure the safety of the residents, staff and visitors?

10. Was a risk assessment carried out after the Legionella bacteria was discovered? If yes, what did it say and what control measures were put in place? If not why not? 

11. Can you confirm that you have issued an improvement notice and if so please provide me with a copy of the notice?

12. Have relatives of residents and day care users been informed and kept up to date on developments?’

Barnet UNISON along with Barnet Alliance for Public Services is campaigning for a Public Inquiry into what happened.

If you want to support this campaign please do the following:

  1. Sign our petition here
  2. Ask your MP to sign this Early Day Motion here
  3. Circulate our petition and Early Day Motion to your friend and family and any mailing lists you are on.
  4. Put our campaign on Face book
  5. Tweet our campaign on Twitter