'I can not emphasise what a huge relief this is'
04:55, 15 Jan 2026
Parents of the Bath area’s most vulnerable young people are “overjoyed” that a lifeline respite care home is set to be saved from closure.
Newton House, on the edge of the city, is the only respite care home in Bath and North East Somerset which offers young people with the most severe care needs short stays away from their full time carers. For parents of children who, even into adulthood, require a near constant level of care, the service is a “lifeline.”
But at the end of 2024 they were told it would have to close as it had become “unaffordable.” The current arrangement had been set to end in October.
Now, after a year of campaigning, families have been told that the council is negotiating a contract for the service for another five years. It was on January 13 — a year to the day that four Newton House parents came to the council to share their stories and urge it to keep Newton House open — that they were invited to a meeting to be told the news.
Richard and Julie Franklin’s son Ryan — who has a condition which means he is small, is non-verbal, and needs medication and a very high level of care — regularly stays at Newton House, where his parents say they know they can trust the team and do not have to worry about him. Speaking after the meeting, Mr Franklin said: “It's just a big relief. When I got home with Julie the pair of us just cried together.”
Wendy Lucas, who only gets a full night's sleep on the two nights her daughter Rhiannon attends Newton House, said after the meeting: “It's wonderful news for all the families and we are beyond overjoyed. We have been told today that a 5-year contract will be negotiated directly with Dimensions who run Newton House. It is everything we fought for.
“I can not emphasise what a huge relief this is and a complete vindication of everything we have been telling the council in meetings for the past 12 months. It's also proof that parent power really does matter.”
The 22 families who used Newton House had been sent letters from the council and care provider Dimensions in November 2024 telling them the respite care service would be closing at the end of January 2025. Ms Lucas never received her letter and found out about the news when she saw it on Facebook.
The letters were sent out before the council’s cabinet member for adult services, Alison Born (Widcombe and Lyncombe, Liberal Democrat), had even been told the service was ending. A few days after the shambolic announcement, Bath & North East Somerset Council wrote again to the families of people who use Newton House to apologise for the distress caused and say that the closure had been “paused” — initially to January 2026 and later to October.
Mr Franklin, a Keynsham window cleaner, launched a petition now signed by almost 3,000 people calling for Newton House to be kept open. His local councillor Dave Biddleston (Keynsham South, Labour) helped him raise the issue with the council. For a year, the Newton House families were a permanent fixture of council committees every time the future of the service was discussed and joined a council working group on the issue.
Now the council says it is able to negotiate to keep the respite care service open for another five years thanks to new powers introduced in the Procurement Act 2023 which allow it to make a direct award. A paper going before a council committee next week said: “This approach reflects the expressed preferences of families and it addresses the critical need to ensure continuity of care for vulnerable adults and their carers.”
The council said it had been in close contact with Dimensions throughout the process and would finalise the arrangements within the next three months. The paper added: “We are firmly committed to ensuring there is no gap in service provision from 1st October (when the current arrangement ends), guaranteeing continuous support for all individuals and families relying on respite care at Newton House.”
Mr Franklin said: “It was a singular relief and it is a nice welcome after Christmas. We have actually been listened to here. People have seen how valuable this service is.”
He added: “As a parent of a person with severe impairments, it means we can plan our lives again. Having somewhere you can trust to leave your loved ones is absolutely vital, and we must never lose this ever again.”
Mr Biddleston said: “Respite care is not a luxury, it is absolutely essential. Parents and carers of people with severe impairments provide extraordinary levels of care, often around the clock, year after year. What is sometimes forgotten is that these parents never stop being parents. Their caring role does not end when their child becomes an adult, it continues for the rest of their lives.
“Respite services like Newton House provide vital breathing space, protect carers’ physical and mental health, and ultimately help families stay together and well. Ensuring stability, continuity, and choice in respite provision is the right thing to do, both morally and practically.”
The update on Newton House will form part of Ms Born's cabinet member update to the council's children, adults, health, and wellbeing scrutiny committee on January 19 in Bath Guildhall.