HC-One, which manages Greengables Care Home in Congleton, is putting up for sale more than 50 of its homes, to focus on more specialised elderly care.

The company, which is the biggest care home operator in the UK, has confirmed it is selling 52 homes – almost one in six of those it owns.

It has plans to move away from proving residential care and to increase high dependency care such as for people with dementia. It will also close four homes.

In a statement released to Nub News it refused to confirm or deny whether any of those include its home in Sandbach Road, Congleton.

The statement released today (March 2) said: "For awareness, we are investing in refurbishing more than 200 of our care homes, alongside our ongoing new build programme, as we modernise our portfolio.

"We are also putting 52 of our care homes up for sale where we feel they would be better served by a local operator in conjunction with other local services and we are proposing to close a further four homes.

"These sales and four closures will only happen when we are convinced that we have found the right alternative operator, and when residents are able to safely move to their new care placement.

"We've made firm commitments to do this with commissioners, to ensure continuity of care, continuous service and smooth transitions for all involved.

"On the list of homes, our priority is our residents, their loved ones and our colleagues, and as such our intention was that they receive the news of plan for their homes before the specific home names were released to the media.

"We are still in the process of informing residents, their loved ones and our colleagues which is why we are currently unable to confirm the list of homes.

"We are working to ensure that this process continues with the minimum disruption to our residents and colleagues as possible, and as such we will be able to confirm once we have spoken to them."

In August 2017 HC-One bought 122 care homes, with 9,000 beds, from Bupa for £300 million, making it the biggest care home company in the UK with 22,000 beds in total and 22,000 staff.