Thank you for your review and we are sorry that you have felt that your permanent experience of our care home is so different to your first visit of two weeks respite with your husband two years ago.<br><br>We work very closely with CQC and CQC-approved advisors to ensure that our staffing levels are appropriate in accordance with current occupancy and dependency of residents.  We continually review and amend our staffing rotas to ensure that we have CQC-required numbers of care staff on every shift as a minimum, often our numbers are above what CQC require in order to ensure that we can provide the best service possible.  We review our staffing levels upon every new admission and whenever any existing residents' needs change.<br><br>We continue to work with the same award winning catering company that we have worked with for over 12 years, who design our varied seasonal menus to ensure healthy, nutritious, delicious (!) and varied meals are served daily, with plenty of choice at each meal.  Everything is prepared and cooked on-site in our custom built, state of the art, kitchen, including the fresh cakes and biscuits served daily with afternoon tea.  All of this is overseen by our head chef who has been leading the kitchen team for over 20 years, supported by an team of assistants.  Like the NHS has been for successive governments, the food budget at our care home has been "ring-fenced and tied to inflationary rises"!  We are very aware of how important delicious and varied meals are and as such we would never dream of buying anything other than the very best of local ingredients with which to work.  We are proud that one of the consistent praises we receive is for the quality of our food so we are sorry that you feel the food budget has been reduced - we can assure you it has not.  Residents have input into the creation of the seasonal menus at our quarterly meal planning meetings so any dishes that you particularly love please do mention to Chef at the meetings and he will be sure to add them to the menu.  Residents can always choose something aside from what is on the daily menu - just let Chef or one of the servery assistants know and Chef will be happy to cook whatever you would like.<br><br>As an independent, family-run care home, we continually re-invest in our beautiful home in all areas, including staffing, training, catering, equipment, maintenance and we have a continual programme of redecoration to ensure that the Lodge and individual rooms, always look fresh and well presented.  Our family's mantra has always been "Never run a Home, or let a Room, that You would not want to stay in yourself."<br><br>We thank you for your feedback and appreciate both the good and the bad as we continually strive to improve and offer the best service that we can.  I do hope that you use the frequent residents meetings to voice any concerns or specific issues that you have in your living environment.  I hope you are also aware of our company's 'open door policy' meaning that the manager, deputy manager, administrator and directors are available for your feedback at any time, as are all the care staff that you see on a daily basis.