Herefordshire Council is planning to hand all council-funded home care in Ross-on-Wye to a single provider from May 2027 — and we're deciding whether to bid for it. Here's what we know, our concerns, and why we want your thoughts before we decide.

It's a significant change to how care is delivered here, and it would reshape social care provision in the town.

The tender process is due to open in October, so we'll post regular updates as we learn more — please follow our page, and do like, comment and ask questions.

The question we need to answer is whether we share the council's vision enough to go through the bid process, or whether to focus on self-funded clients instead. The changes being proposed would be transformative for Total Living Care, and we'd need to believe in them before we commit to bidding. Whether you're a carer, a client or just interested, your thoughts and comments will help inform that decision.

Everything below is our understanding based on meetings with the council up to and including this week, so details may well change.

If you are a client of ours, please don't worry about any of what follows — it's subject to change and there are options either way. More detail as we have it.

What's being proposed, as we understand it:

• A single provider ("the lead provider") for all council-funded care in Ross-on-Wye
• If you need council-funded care, you'll be placed with that provider
• Choosing a different provider outright would mean managing your own funding through Direct Payments or an Individual Service Fund — something that's likely to be very difficult for many of our current clients
• Once a lead provider is chosen, all existing care packages transfer to them during a short mobilisation period — a window in which the successful provider will also be juggling many other priorities
• That provider does not need to have had a CQC inspection of their services
• The lead provider would need to respond to hospital discharges in as little as 2 hours, 7 days a week
• The lead provider would be expected to employ an Occupational Therapist and a Physiotherapist to support hospital discharge pathways

Why the council says it's changing the model:

The council points to an ageing population, growing demand from working-age adults needing lifelong or specialist support, workforce pressures around recruitment, retention, pay and rising skill requirements, and cost pressures from wage inflation, regulation and increasingly complex care needs.

The proposal splits Herefordshire into 8 zones, each with a single lead provider who can subcontract to other agencies. If a client is too vulnerable to express a preference, the lead provider becomes their only option — in practice, the right to self-fund and choose your own provider is very hard for the most vulnerable people to exercise.

Our concerns:

The lead provider won't need to have been inspected by the CQC. Previously, providers needed at least a Good rating. This feels particularly pointed given the council itself recently received a "Requires Improvement" rating from the CQC — a council whose own adult social care was rated Requires Improvement in May 2026 is now proposing to drop the CQC-rating requirement for the providers it commissions. A hard position to defend publicly, or at its next inspection.

Our bigger concern is the short window to move every existing care package to the new lead provider. At best, that's going to upset a lot of people receiving care across Herefordshire. At worst, it risks real failures in care as the lead provider struggles to recruit, train and induct enough staff to meet the sudden increase in demand. In 20 years of working with the council, nobody has proposed disruption on this scale. We sincerely hope the council pulls back from this point — given its own stated aims for the change, this specific one looks ideological rather than necessary.

There's a workforce risk in that same window that matters just as much. Good carers build real relationships with the people they support, over months and years — that's the job. Facing a forced move to an employer they didn't choose, on rotas and terms they haven't agreed to, some experienced carers simply won't make the transfer. And the disruption to actual working hours during mobilisation — shifts changing, rotas rebuilt from scratch, weeks of uncertainty over who's working where — is exactly the kind of upheaval that pushes people out of caring altogether, not just out of their current job. The council names workforce pressures as one of the reasons for this change; a rushed mobilisation risks making recruitment and retention worse, not better. And it's not just a staffing problem for providers — it's how the people receiving care end up with a string of unfamiliar carers rather than the continuity they're supposed to be promised.

If you're receiving care from us — especially if you've asked to move to us from another provider — please don't worry. We'll be making the case that transferring hundreds of care packages across Herefordshire in a short window is neither necessary nor kind. It would be disruptive, risky, and probably unmanageable for the lead provider, the council, and providers' staffing and viability alike. We don't think this specific proposal is feasible — but if the council presses ahead anyway, we'll help guide you through setting up Direct Payments or an Individual Service Fund.



The business question:

We don't have any cost detail yet, and that's the real question for us. Meeting the 2-hour, 7-day hospital discharge requirement and employing an OT and a physiotherapist all costs money. If the council funds that properly — the 10% staffing contingency, the extra administration, the additional clinical posts — this could be a good business decision. But if this is mainly about saving money for the council by covering more care through a single lead provider, precedent suggests any saving may be short-lived. Our own view is that it will eventually do the opposite — agencies will exit, carers will leave the sector, and less competition will mean lower quality. Choice and a mix of providers are one of the few real safeguards people have over the quality of their own care — and this proposal removes both.

There's a precedent for this. Kirklees Council ran a very similar model — a single lead provider for each of six zones — from December 2017. Its own scrutiny committee found the arrangement had become unsustainable, because providers were competing for a limited pool of commissioned hours. Kirklees has since dropped single-provider exclusivity altogether, replacing it with an open framework where multiple providers can operate in each area.

We'd like to see a risk-averse evolution of care that respects the fragility of those we serve. If saving money is the ultimate objective, we've always asked to be involved in efficiency initiatives.

We'd love to hear from you — whether you're a client, a family member, a carer, or just someone who cares about how social care works here. Like, comment, share your thoughts, and follow the page as this develops.

Sources for the Kirklees comparison: Kirklees Council Health & Adult Social Care Scrutiny Panel public reports pack (4 Feb 2026); UK Contracts Finder notices published Sept and Oct 2017 (six-zone award, contract start 1 Dec 2017); Find a Tender notices 008605-2021 and 061130-2025 (confirming the arrangement and its 2026 replacement by an open multi-provider framework). Full links available on request.