The county council has been accused of hiding the decision to halt the multi-million-pound plan to transform care homes during a busy week without real justification or scrutiny.

Hampshire County Council has given the go-ahead to halt the £173 million plan to transform and expand nursing care homes across the county.

The decision comes after “consistent” and “sustainable” rates to purchase good-quality beds in the market, and the rise in building costs by around £50 million make the plans “no longer stack up financially” and, therefore, “halt” any further work on the programme.

At the meeting, Cllr Jackie Porter said the decision was “extremely disappointing” and felt like “bad news hidden in a busy week” since last week the council decided not to close Stubbington Study Centre and approved submitting the local government reorganisation interim plan, which will see councils reorganised.

Cllr Porter added that the plan doesn’t have an “adequate” interrogation. She asked about the recommendation to halt further investment in the scheme: “What exactly does halt mean? Does that mean cancellation of the scheme or just kicking it down the road for another authority to deliver?”

Speaking about the Corneways Care Home, she said that the site has been closed for nearly a decade, and since then, residents have been demanding better use for the place. “They watched it rot through Covid-19 when care was so desperately needed”.

“What exactly are you planning for the site? When will residents know? Residents will be extremely disappointed that the site plans for Corneways are halted, not postponed, shelved, replanned, just halted. What is the long-term financial case for not building out newer care homes? How and when will Hampshire County Council decide what they’re going to do with the land instead?” she added.

Cllr Jonathan Williams from Winchester City Council reminded cabinet that 25,000 people signed an online petition against the closure of Bishop’s Waltham House, “our” care home.

“It was our care home. It was local; staff lived locally and went above and beyond to care for the local residents there. The open days brought in the community to share their love for the care home and enhanced the experience.”

Cllr Williamson said the proposal “reopened wounds” and “hurts even more”. Reading the words of one relative of a patient at Bishop’s Waltham, he said: “I’ve tried so many times to try and put into words how the decision to close Bishop’s House has affected us, but I just can’t find any to do in the last years paying justice. I’ve heard so many former residents have passed away. You could argue it may have happened due to age, but speaking to families, the disruptive move was detrimental to their decline in health.

“Nothing can give us back what we had. Finding good care homes is hard, so shutting one that was so good feels criminal. When I heard they are no longer building the new care homes, my heart again broke. They moved my grandmother, a 103 years old, out of the place she called home, somewhere where she felt safe and cared for. She worked all her life, and when she needed something back, you let her down.”

He added that the proposal comes “a bit out of the blue”, “lacks detailed justification”, and does not have “sufficient scrutiny”.

Cllr Malcolm Wallace, “surprised” to see the proposal, which showed a “change in direction” only 20 months after the plan was approved despite the “outcry” of residents, asked: “What went wrong with the last plan? How did these errors occur?”

“It should come as no surprise that costs go up. What investigation consideration has been given to the liability of those for professional negligence who prepared the cost estimates that are out of date within 20 months?”

Cllr Wallace said there are “a bunch of questions” about the £173 million transformation plan and the new plan. Therefore, he urged the council to pause the decision to give the council “the proper chance” to review and scrutinise the plan.

Deputy director of corporate operations Andy Lowe responded to Cllr Wallace and said that while he is “not sure if that has anything to do with errors in the original costs”, two major implications affected the scheme, market conditions and the cost of borrowing, and construction costs.

“It’s not a technical issue, it’s just a technical issue in terms of delivering the scheme.”

Supporting the proposal, Cllr Russell Oppenheimer said: “It is the right decision for now.”

“A lot has changed, and it is right for us to change our minds when facts change. We monitor things very closely, and if facts change again, then we may come back with a different decision.”

Cllr Oppenheimer said that it’s better to halt “this now” to create a “blank canvas” to review all options properly.

The county council leader, Nick Adams-King, said that with the council’s financial situation is “entirely right we reviewed the market.”

He added that the decision didn’t come out of the blue because it was one of the recommendations in the independent panel report presented to the council in February.

Cllr Adams-King said: “It doesn’t mean that we scrapped the entire programme, but it does mean that it’s right we look at it again. The changes that we have to consider here, actually, much of this is at the door of the government. It’s the government’s financial decisions that have caused us to be in a situation where interest rates have been rising.

“Things are changing. We need to respond to an ever-increasing and ever-more complex need. In doing so, we need to use every single lever we have at our disposal to use our money and resources to the best of our ability. It’s right that we stop and we look at this.”

A further report will be presented in “due course”.