Please supply information relating to the incidence of attempts by care providers to evict residents in care homes - that is, care providers giving residents notice to leave or otherwise attempting to get them to leave without their involvement in the decision or against their wishes.

Please indicate the number of cases you are aware of for the last 3 years, also indicating if and how your council responded to the situation, and what was the ultimate result of the situation, i.e. if and how the situation was resolved.

Norfolk County Council does not keep records about why care homes issue notices to evict residents. There may be information on a provider file but this would require us to look through every file we have for a provider. This task would take the request beyond the appropriate limit.

However staff are able to remember some types of incidence that may prove useful. We can recall a time when a contract with a home was terminated because the rates were raised to a degree that the council was unable to continue using them. The residents were found alternative placements.

The most common reason why notice is given is because a home is closing. In these situations, as with that above, the department works with the service user and the home to plan the transition and find suitable alternative placements. This has proved to be very successful in the past.

Our provider list shows that 14 homes closed in the last three years. On these occasions alternative placements were located and some homes stayed open until suitable accommodation was found for all the residents.

We have also located one instance where the then Commission for Social Care Inspection (now Care Quality Commission) cancelled a home's registration. The situation would have been handled as though the home was closing.

Please provide me with the number of instances your council is aware of where either CQC or local authority safeguarding procedures have substantiated allegations of institutional abuse of a Leonard Cheshire social care service user over the past 3 years.

Further, please provide anonymised information on the alleged behaviour by Leonard Cheshire resulting in the conclusion.

I have spoken with our Quality Assurance team who are responsible for dealing with issues of safeguarding within the homes Norfolk County Council contracts with and they work closely with CQC on these issues. They have no record of any issues of abuse toward services users under the care of Leonard Cheshire over the past 3 years.