Care home faces £140k fine over stairlift fall

A care home operator has admitted a health and safety charge after a resident broke her hip due to a stairlift fall because she had not been strapped in properly.

Calderdean Ltd, which is now reportedly in liquidation, was fined over £142,000 after pleading guilty to failing to discharge a general health and safety duty to a person other than an employee.

The woman, who has now passed away, fell from the stairlift in 2015 in the formerly-named The Alders Care Home in Arnside Crescent, Morecambe.

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A CQC inspection of the home raised concerns about care and welfare and led to the authority taking action against Calderdean Ltd.

The home has since changed hands and the CQC’s latest report on the home, now called Arnside Lodge and run by Thornton Lodge Care Ltd, rated the home as ‘Good’.

Most stairlifts are fitted with a belt strap to hold users in place while others can have a body harness attached to them for safer transit.

Other safety features commonly include obstruction detection and designs to stop clothing becoming entangled.

Most pieces of equipment undergo a rigorous testing regime and each design and component can be tested on as many as 25,000 return journeys, which is the equivalent of 10 years of use.

Stairlifts travel at approximately 10cm per second which means a journey up a straight staircase with a distance of 4.14 metres takes 41.1 seconds. A slow speed of travel is an important safety measure.