A care provider has been ordered to pay £200,000 at Northamptonshire Magistrates’ Court after it failed to protect residents from avoidable during the Covid pandemic.

Amicura Limted, which operated the now closed Temple Court Care Home in Kettering, was fined £120,000 and order to pay a £181 victim surcharge and £80,000 costs to the CQC.

Ros Sanderson, CQC deputy director of enforcement, said: “The people living at Temple Court Care Home were catastrophically let down by the care provider’s poor systems and processes.

“We expect all residents to receive care and treatment in a safe way and to make sure that when people move into a service, the leadership team have the managerial oversight to keep people safe.”

The court heard that during the height of the pandemic, between late February 2020 and early April 2020, Temple Court doubled its admissions from 25 to 51 without properly assessing the risk and with no manager or assistant manager in place. A senior carer was left to run the home with limited support from the provider.

Following a visit by Northamptonshire CCG on 30 April 2020, the provider agreed to suspend further admissions. Nursing staff from the CCG were brought in to give support.

The local authority and CCG took the decision to move all residents out of the home in May 2020.

In the same month, the CQC found people were malnourished and dehydrated and there were not enough staff to provide safe care that met people’s needs. There was also a lack good medicines management and effective treatment. For example, people’s diabetes had not been controlled and people’s pressure sores had not been tended to effectively.

Sanderson added: “Anyone would expect that if a service was to double the number of the people living at their service, managers would have undertaken risk assessments for those people moving in and ensured that there was enough staff to ensure people’s safety, particularly during the pandemic. This did not happen at Temple Court.

“Amicura Limited has failed in its specific legal duty to protect residents from being exposed to a significant risk of harm, which is why they have been fined £120,000.

“I would hope this prosecution reminds all care providers they must always ensure people’s safety and manage risks to their wellbeing.

“The majority of care providers do an excellent job but when they don’t, we can and will take action to hold providers to account and protect people.”

A spokesperson for Temple Court said: “We fully accept the court’s sentence and apologise unreservedly to everyone affected by the failures of our systems and processes in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Following these events, we immediately set about learning lessons about what went wrong and committed to making significant improvements across the company to ensure that our residents are always safe, supported and well-cared for. Our focus has been on implementing measures which will always prioritise resident wellbeing by improving service provision and accountability, strengthening governance and oversight, and supporting our home managers in their development.

“It was also important for us to understand exactly why standards deteriorated so dramatically at a home which had undergone significant investment in people and equipment, had made huge progress, and had scored 92% in a report by NHS Nene CCG only a couple of months earlier. This was not previously a failing home and was very much fit for purpose.

“With the benefit of hindsight, we recognise now that whilst we felt at the time we were acting in the national interest and supporting the NHS by accepting patients discharged from hospitals into care homes under government policy at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, this actually placed incredible strain on our team – leaving many of them overwhelmed, exhausted and themselves ill with the virus.

“This, together with the rapid rate of discharges from hospitals to the home, had a significant and detrimental effect on the running of the home and the care provided to our residents.

“These factors were unprecedented, but that does not excuse what happened and we know we must do better in the future. We are fully committed to our journey of continuous improvement and remain determined to deliver the best possible care for every resident.”