High Court rejects challenge to transfer of ownership of care homes to private provider

In Hughes, R (On the Application Of) v Kirklees Council [2025] EWHC 3136 (Admin) (09 December 2025), Upper Tribunal Judge Ward found that the only ground in which the claim “potentially” stood to succeed was in the council's failure to update the figures used for the projected cost of purchasing the services from a private sector provider.

The claimant, a resident at Castle Grange care home, challenged Cabinet decisions taken between late 2023 and early 2025 relating to reports and consultations about the future of Castle Grange and Claremont House.

The claim concerned the legality of the council’s process in deciding to transfer, rather than close or continue operating, the residential dementia care homes, which the council said were operating at a substantial cost.

The grounds submitted were as follows:

• Grounds 1 and 4: Irrationality/material error of fact
• Ground 2: Breach of Tameside duty of enquiry
• Ground 3: Breach of Public Sector Equality Duty
• Ground 5: Inadequate consultation

The Statement of Facts and Grounds (SFG) raised the overarching point that the decision was "predicated on financial savings yet its basis involves multiple gaps in the reasoning and consideration on this issue. It therefore involved irrationality in [its] procedural aspect.”

Among the "multiple gaps" alleged in the SFG were:

• “presenting and maintaining an artificially low price for what the council would be paying a private provider following sale contrary to evidence of the actual local market rate;
• maintaining an unnecessarily low price at the homes;
• failing to consider the option of retaining the homes in the council's ownership but not (as put in certain of the council's reports) "doing nothing";
• treating sale as the inexorable consequence of there being an overspend;
• uncertainty over whether the amount of capital expenditure that the homes would require (put at £1.4 million) had been communicated to a prospective purchaser and its affordability if it had been;
• the factor relied upon of an excess of operating costs being attributable to the council itself by reason of its unbudgeted use of agency staff;
• failure to address why the asserted operating deficit of the homes in the council's hands would not be repeated in the hands of a private sector operator; and
• calculating on the basis of full occupancy when the homes had been historically under-occupied.”

Counsel for the local authority meanwhile submitted that the claimant, a resident of Castle Grange care home, lacked standing to bring the claim in relation to Claremont House.

Considering this point, Upper Tribunal Judge Ward said: “Standing is context-specific, so matters such as the decision challenged, the grounds of challenge and the subject-mater affected may all be relevant. In the present case, the decision challenged was a single decision in respect of both the homes, the council's reasoning applied to both, the grounds are the same in respect of both the Homes and the outcome will affect both.

“It is inevitable that any decision in relation to the claimant's claim will also impact upon Claremont House and I am aware of no authority, nor can see any sensible basis, for splitting the court's decision or any relief given so as to apply differently to each.”

Analysing the case, the judge said: “Thus we arrive at the position where the claimant has standing in relation to both the homes, there was no lack of promptness in bringing her claim but the only ground in which it potentially stands to succeed is in the council's failure to update the figures used for the projected cost of purchasing the services from a private sector provider.”

Irrespective of this, Upper Tribunal Judge Ward concluded it was “highly likely” that the outcome for the claimant would not have been substantially different if the conduct complained of had not occurred.

He added: “I am therefore required by s31(3D) of the 1981 Act to refuse leave.”

Campaigners from Save Kirklees Dementia Care Homes told the BBC that they plan to appeal the ruling.

Lottie Winson