Dirty ovens, poor hygiene, unsafe medicine processes and managers without “the skills, knowledge or experience to provide safe care” contributed to a Brightlingsea care home being rated inadequate by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

The Cottage Residential Care Home in the High Street catered for up to 10 people with learning disabilities or autism spectrum disorder, some of whom may also have had mental health needs, a physical disability or dementia.

Six people were living in the home at the time of the inspection on July 23. A for sale board was outside the property. The CQC told Brightlingsea Info: “Following that inspection and their own findings, the local authority decided to move people out. All residents had left the service by 25 July 2025.”

Inspectors reported: “People were not safeguarded from abuse, and we found there was a lack of documentation in place to support consent.” They said that the home was in breach of legal requirements in relation to people’s safe care and treatment, staffing, safeguarding and consent..

“Risks to people were not managed safely, the environment was not safe or well maintained. We were not assured about the quality of food being provided as we found several out-of-date items in the fridge, Staff were not adequately trained and medicines were not managed safely. Infection control processes were not always safe.”

Since the CQC inspection, the home is believed to have closed and appears to be empty. The phone number is discontinued and Brightlingsea Info has been unable to contact the proprietor.

At the time of the inspection, the home was being run by two interim managers. Inspectors said: “We were not assured the managers present had the skills, knowledge or experience to provide safe care. They were not aware of requirements relating to specialised diets, medicine processes, safeguarding process, oversight of training, infection control, fire safety, safe storage of chemicals, Legionnaires management or risk management.”

Medicines processes were unsafe, said inspectors, with poor record keeping, out of date items still being administered, prescribed items from months before left unused and management not noticing that one person was at risk of not receiving the correct dose of tablets.

“Multiple incidents” hadn’t been reported to the local authority or the CQC. One incident involved a resident who fractured a hip and another who’d fallen and cut their head – with no recorded medical advice or evidence that treatment had been obtained for the head injury.

The overall cleanliness and hygiene standards at the service were said to be poor, with an “extremely dirty” oven, visible mould and mildew in a warming drawer and rusty and debris-ingrained oven trays. Multiple food items were found beyond their expiry dates.

Inspectors said they couldn’t be certain that a fire risk assessment had been carried out by a competent person, nor that preventative actions recommended in 2019 had been carried out. Poor storage practices, such as bedding stored near hear sources or obstructing fire exit “significantly increased the risk of fire spread”.

There was a “lack of robust oversight in relation to staff training and competency” and no staff had completed training to help residents who had dysphagia, or difficulty swallowing. “This lack of training led to the local authority placing agency staff to support a person with a specialist diet, highlighting the impact of these gaps on safe care delivery,” said inspectors.

Inspectors reviewed staff files and found yearly competency observations that were almost identical across two different staff members, raising concerns about the validity of the assessments. In one file, the most recent appraisal was dated 2020.

According to inspectors, not everyone at the service was able to speak to them. “One person told us they liked living there,” they said. “People’s bedrooms were personalised and staff knew people well.”

The inspectors also observed “positive interaction between staff and people; however, we observed staff were not following appropriate guidance in relation to people’s diets or their bowel management which compromised people’s safety”.

The report also highlighted:

• Managers were unable to provide evidence of a valid public liability insurance certificate;
• Uncertainty about whether a fire risk assessment had been carried out by a competent person, or that preventative actions recommended in 2019 had been carried out;
• Poor storage practices, such as bedding stored near hear sources or obstructing fire exit “significantly increased the risk of fire spread”;
• Water tests for Legionnaires disease expired and retest dates overdue;
• A resident who was to be kept away from chemicals being seen in areas where cleaning products were stored in unlocked cupboards.

Inspectors gave the home inadequate ratings in the overall, safe and well-led categories. The home’s ‘good’ ratings in the effective, caring and responsive categories on the current report – which can be found here – came from a previous inspection and were not rated in July.

•This article was updated on September 26 to reflect the information from the CQC regarding the removal of residents from the home two days after the inspectio.