Several social care services in Bucks are to be brought in-house after the council said it “lost confidence” in the care provider.

Buckinghamshire County Council (BCC) announced this week that it terminated its contract with Buckinghamshire Care Ltd, which provides several social care services in the county, after the quality of some services provided was deemed to be inadequate.

The council has stressed there will be no disruption to service users or their families, and that frontline staff will be transfer over to the council.

According to a report on the BCC website, the contract will be terminated on December 31 and brought in-house from January 1, which is expected to make recurrent savings of £363,000.

County councillor for Ryemead and Micklefield, Julia Wassell, called the move a “good example of a crisis” and said it had the potential to be “disruptive” to staff, service users and carers, despite reassurances from the council that it would not be.

She said: “It is a good thing that the county council has taken it back in-house but the question remains whether it should have been outsourced in the first place.

“The council needs to be flagging up earlier when these problems arise.”

Buckinghamshire Care Ltd provides day care, employment, respite, re-ablement and laundry services to 900 social care clients and their families, and currently employs 394 staff, of which around 250 are in full-time employment.

The care provider manages a respite care service, based in Seeleys House, Beaconsfield, which is regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and was rated as ‘requires improvement’ in its latest inspection report.

It is rumoured to be temporarily closing to move premises, although it is not known where.

A report on the council’s website says: “The council lost confidence in Buckinghamshire Care Ltd’s ability to work to its required standards when, in November 2016, it was made aware that a number of operational and quality issues first raised by the Care Quality Commission during an inspection of one of their regulated services run by Buckinghamshire Care Ltd in April 2016 (Seeleys House) had not been satisfactorily rectified and were still in evidence.”

In a statement Wendy Mallen, deputy cabinet member for health and wellbeing, said: “Due to a number of operational issues related to service quality and financial management Buckinghamshire County Council has terminated its contract with Buckinghamshire Care Ltd, which provides several social care services in the county.

“The council has lost confidence in the company's ability to deliver services to the high standards it expects and feels that it is in the best interests of both service users and staff to bring the services back ‘in-house’ until a longer term solution is found.

“This decision, made on December 13, was not taken lightly. However the quality of services provided to our residents – in particular their safety and wellbeing – is paramount and takes priority over everything else.

“We do not anticipate any disruption to service users or their families as frontline staff will transfer over to the council and continue to provide services as usual.”

Buckinghamshire Care Ltd spokesman Phil Jones declined to comment.