During an assessment under our new approach
Date of assessment: 03 June 2026 to 03 July 2026. King's Court Care Home is a residential and nursing care home providing care for older people, including people living with dementia, long-term health conditions and end-of-life care needs. The provider had not established effective systems to assess, monitor and improve the quality and safety of services. Governance arrangements had failed to identify and address a range of concerns relating to staffing oversight, recruitment processes, medicines management, incident management, safeguarding practices and regulatory compliance.
The service was significantly reliant upon agency workers to deliver care. Despite this reliance, the provider could not demonstrate effective oversight of agency staff recruitment, competency, training, deployment or fitness to work. Records relating to agency staffing were inconsistent and incomplete, and the provider was unable to demonstrate that all workers deployed within the service had been subject to appropriate checks or competency assurance processes.
The provider's systems for identifying, investigating and learning from incidents were not consistently effective. Opportunities to identify risks, analyse trends and implement improvements had been missed. We found evidence that management oversight was not sufficiently robust to provide assurance that risks to people were being effectively monitored and mitigated.
Leadership arrangements had been unstable, with one interim manager in place at the service since March 2026. Whilst recent improvements had been made under interim leadership, concerns remained regarding leadership capacity, oversight and the provider's ability to sustain improvement. These failings affected people's experiences of care, particularly in relation to responsiveness, continuity, communication and confidence in leadership.
Whilst many people described compassionate and committed frontline staff, we found significant shortcomings in the systems intended to ensure people consistently received safe, effective and well-led care.
We identified three breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 relating to governance, staffing and fit and proper persons employed. As a result of the concerns identified, the Care Quality Commission took enforcement action against the provider. The provider has started taking positive steps to remedy the issues.