PLANS for redundancies at Southern Cross care homes have been withdrawn, the GMB union has revealed.

The union said yesterday that a written agreement was being prepared to facilitate the sale of each of the company’s 752 homes across the UK, almost 100 of which are in Scotland, to make sure that the transition was “smooth and orderly”.

As a result the redundancies and changes to staff’s pay and conditions had been abandoned.

The union said the first 250 homes could complete a transfer to new owners by the end of September with the rest following by the end of October, when Southern Cross is wound down.

National officer Justin Bowden said: “The current plan that only two parties, the landlords and the outgoing management as signatories to the proposed business purchase agreement, will have a say in what should happen next at each home is completely unacceptable.

“Residents and their families and local councils and the NHS who pay the bills, the workforce who manage and run the homes and their union GMB, Governments from across the UK and the Care Quality Commission have to be part of the decision-making process.”

A Scottish Government spokeswoman assured residents of Southern Cross’s 98 Scotland homes, saying “contingency arrangements are in place to make sure that continuity of care for Southern Cross residents continues to be the top priority as the operation of homes changes hands”.