Respite services for elderly at the Dorothy Lucy Care Home have finished this week.

The KCC-run centre, located on Northumberland Road, Maidstone, employed 70 people and offered respite care and day services for the elderly and dementia sufferers.

The authority also confirmed all day services would be stop by March, 2017.

Age UK Maidstone is the main provider of day services in the community. They will be able to accommodate the elderly/frail citizens at their centres, but do not have enough capacity at their Dorothy Goodman Centre, in Bearsted, to take the users with dementia.

KCC is hoping another dementia care provider will emerge, possibly with a centre at the Mid Kent Shopping Centre in Allington. Alternatively KCC may consider creating a new day centre itself.

There were protests against the care homes' closure but KCC councillors moved to shut the centre at a meeting in March. They claimed it was not fit for purpose.

Four private care homes in the Maidstone area have offered to take Dorothy Lucy’s residential patients.

The centre, built in 1985, has 28-beds, but currently has one permanent resident and four short-term respite care residents.