BON AIR Nursing Home is to close within the next two months and at least five nurses will lose their jobs.

Plans are now being made to turn the home, including an extension which is currently being built, into ‘assisted living’ flats for the elderly.

Twenty staff, including carers and ancillary domestics, were told of the imminent closure yesterday by Kevin Groombridge of Guardian Care Homes, the UK company which bought the home in January 2004.

Mr Groombridge told the Jersey Evening Post that the decision had been made to close the nursing home because with just 11 residents in a 27-room facility – which by September could have catered for 40 – it was no longer viable to continue the business.

Residents and all contactable families have been informed of the decision.

Talks are going on with those families and with staff from Health and Social Services to ensure a smooth transfer of the residents to other private-sector nursing homes where there are vacancies.

Mr Groombridge said: ‘The staff have seen the number of vacancies at the nursing home and will have realised that things couldn’t have continued in that way.’