A CARE home has been ranked inadequate by quality watchdogs who found there were not enough staff to keep residents safe.

Care Quality Commission inspectors who visited Duchess Gardens Care Centre in Bingley also said a lot of staff training was out of date and some staff supervisions were overdue.

Information about how to evacuate certain people if fire broke out was also missing from the home’s emergency files.

The home, which was caring for 64 people at the time of the CQC’s inspection in October last year, was only taken over by Qualia Care Limited in February.

The service had been in administration before that and at the last inspection in September 2015 the home was told to make improvements.

A spokesperson for the home said: “We are disappointed that the home falls below the high quality standards that we set. There are some historic and long-standing issues dating back to the previous operator, which everyone is working hard to address. There is a robust action plan in place, which is already delivering results and this has been acknowledged by the CQC on its subsequent visit. The action plan is under weekly review and we are committed to working with the regulator to drive sustained improvements at the home.”

In the new CQC report out this week inspectors said: “Staff were not always being recruited safely and there were not enough of them to keep people safe and deliver person-centred care. Whilst some staff were seen to deliver caring, kind and compassionate care, others were not treating people with dignity and respect. A lot of staff training was out of date and some staff supervisions were overdue.

“Although staff could tell us about safeguarding procedures, we found incidents were not always being reported to the safeguarding team. Important information was missing from the emergency fire files about people’s evacuation needs should an emergency arise.”

People’s care plans did not always provide accurate and up to date information about their needs and information was “difficult to find or contradictory”. Risk assessments were being completed but some had been completed incorrectly.

“This meant we were not confident action was being taken to mitigate risks to people using the service,” said the report.

Advice about people’s healthcare needs was not always being sought in a timely way, some people’s nutritional and hydration needs were not always being met and mealtime experiences varied on different units.

“People were not supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff did not support people in the least restrictive way possible,” added the report, which also found despite the home being generally clean and tidy there were areas where unpleasant odours were present.

There was a lack of leadership and direction for staff, said the inspectors, but they noted a new management team was in place and had produced an action plan for improvement.

The service is now in special measures which means it will be kept under review and be inspected in six months.