Care home business entered administration owing £15.5m to bank

A Grantham care home business is up for sale after it entered administration owing £15.5m to its bank, according to documents seen by TheBusinessDesk.com

Lifeline Nursing Services, which employed 170 people and provided care home facilities for around 125 residents, entered administration in May.

Lifeline’s funder, Bank of Ireland, called in Daniel Smith and Adrian Berry of Deloitte to act as joint administrators after the company, it’s sister companies and holding company Care Investments UK fell further and further behind in repayments.

The company owns and operates three elderly care homes (St Claire’s in Lincoln, St John’s in Boston and St Edmund’s in Grantham) in Lincolnshire, but has not filed any annual accounts for two years.

Administrators from Deloitte say they are now engaged in a marketing process to sell the three homes, but that might take up to a year.

In a statement, the administrators said: “Following stabilisation of the trading position of the care homes we intend to market the properties for dale, a process which may take several months.

“Once a sale(s) for the homes has been agreed, the period to transfer the Care Quality Commission registration to the purchaser(s) can take up to 12 weeks.

“It is therefore possible that the duration of the administration may exceed 12 months.”

The administrators said that they don’t expect the secured creditor [the Bank of Ireland] will not be repaid in full and that they don’t expect any funds to be available for unsecured creditors.”