Woman, 102, in Downing St demo

A woman of 102 who faces being evicted from a residential care home for the second time, took part in a Downing Street protest today.

Rose Cottle, a former teacher, was making a personal plea to Prime Minister Tony Blair about plans for the home where she lives to be sold to property developers.

The case highlights the crisis in care of the elderly as increasing numbers of care home owners are selling up, claiming that profit margins are too small - nursing homes in London are closing at twice the rate of the rest of the country.

Miss Cottle, who sold her house to pay for her care, is among 91 residents who could face eviction if a deal between the developers and the debt-ridden owners of Boreham Wood Care Village in Hertfordshire goes ahead. Bryant Homes has agreed to buy the home for £3.5million, subject to obtaining planning permission to pull down the existing buildings and put up flats.

Miss Cottle was first forced to move when her previous care home in Elstree closed three years ago. Today, wearing a smart red outfit, she arrived at Downing Street in a wheelchair. Before handing in a petition she told the Evening Standard: "We have thousands of signatures.

"I first moved to a nursing home when I was 84 years old. I was very happy there. They told me it was closing when I was 99 years old. It was very dreadful to have to move on."

Miss Cottle, who never married and does not have any children, has lived in London all her life. It was in Islington that she dedicated her life to teaching. She said: "I am 102 years old and I have moved twice in the past three years. I do not want to move again. I am very old, I'm older than the Queen Mother, and I don't want to be turned out of my home. I have got my own little flat and I can still get out to the shops.

"There are 91 old people in the home and some are very distressed at the thought of moving. It is being sold for profit, without any thought of the trauma that some of the people must be suffering."

Her nephew Barry Cottle, from Hemel Hempstead, described the trend of closing down accommodation for the elderly as "a national scandal".

He said: "This place was only built 10 years ago and is a custom-built care home. The government claims it is trying to free up NHS resources by reducing the numbers of elderly people forced to live in hospital beds, but does nothing to stop the closure and demolition of perfectly good care homes.

"My aunt has paid her taxes all her working life, sold her house to pay for her care, and now is being threatened with being made homeless again because the people who run her home say it is not economic to do so. This really isn't the right way for a decent civilised society to be treating its elderly people. It's just wrong.

"They should be permitted to live their retirement days in dignity and security without the stress and the trauma of being made homeless."

Professor Patrick Carr, operations director of Assured Care Centres which owns the home, said that during its 10 years in existence it had lost more than £3 million, which had made shareholders "anxious".

The directors had been seeking a buyer to take it on as a going concern, but had not been successful, he said.

"The nub of this problem is that the vast majority of people in care homes, in nursing homes, are publicly funded, and the amount of money which the Government gives to local authorities to pay those fees is inadequate," he said. "Because of that, margins become tight, homes lose money, and that's the situation we're presently in. We need more money from the local authority and of course they in turn need more money from the Government."

Miss Cottle and her nephew were joined for their visit to No10 by Bryan Mason, chairman of Stop (Save The Old People) - a campaign group set up to try to save the home.

Directors of social services found that in the year to July 2001, local authorities in the South-East lost an average of 9.5 per cent of nursing home places in their area. Nationally the figure was 4.7 per cent.

Government figures show that since April 1998 the number of residential and nursing home beds has been cut by more than 21,000. As well as the booming property market, high employment and a dwindling pool of qualified nurses, have also been blamed for the accelerating pace of care home closures in London and the South-East.