Social services chiefs have defended the decision to privatise a town's only remaining old people's home.

They intend to let a not-for-profit private operator take over Wallingford's Blue Mountain home in Wantage Road, and move it to new premises with more beds at the vacant Upper School site.

At a town hall meeting, Oxfordshire's assistant director of social services, Nick Welch, attempted to reassure town councillors the home would remain in the town after privatisation, and the quality nursing care would not be compromised.

Two other local old people's homes, Bridge House and Shillingford House, were closed recently.

Mr Welch said: "The existing Blue Mountains home falls below building standards enforceable in 2002. For example, the regulations will require all rooms to be at least 9.3m square. How do we get the money to raise standards?"

The private sector had to be the source, he warned.

"We're between a rock and a hard place", he said.

The new Blue Mountains home would have increased nursing facilities and staff, with an emphasis on nursing people in the home rather than in hospital, if possible. Councillors Betty Atkins and Patricia Granados said the idea encroached on the role of local hospitals.

Mr Welch agreed there was an important policy issue over what care the over-stretched NHS hospitals should have to provide especially when care in a nursing home was not automatically free.

But he added: "One reason for need for more nursing places is the increase in demand for palliative care over the last five years, and the large number of people suffering irreversible dementia who can only be cared for safely in a dedicated wing."