A BITTER row over fees has left one private firm pulling out of Bradford Council home care contracts and two more refusing to take on new referrals.

And Bradford Care Association has warned that firms could face being forced out of business as a result of the hourly rate the authority pays, which has remained frozen for the last three years.

In addition, a crisis is looming as the national minimum wage is set to rise in six months, the association warns.

About 3,000 elderly or disabled people across the district get help in their homes with tasks like eating, washing or housework.

The Council pays private firms £12.50 an hour to carry out this work, slightly below the regional average of £12.65.

But the association, which represents 17 local home care providers, says this is already not enough, and the matter will only get worse as the minimum wage requirements rise in October.

Its secretary Louise Bestwick said: "Our members are facing very difficult decisions and we can't afford to let our quality of care fall.

"Some have already stopped taking new referrals from the local authority - they have honoured their existing service users, but feel they are no longer able to take on new referrals at the current rate."

She added the association had repeatedly urged the Council to undertake a cost-of-care review, which was even more "urgent" given the recent budget announcement by the Government of the impending three per cent rise in the minimum wage.

She said: "Unless changes are made, the cost-of-care review carried out and recommendations followed through, our members will be forced to look at their business plans because otherwise it will not be viable for them to continue as they are."

She added that most workers received about £7 an hour, which was above the minimum wage, but that some providers risked falling under the rate when travelling time was taken into account.

Councillor Amir Hussain, the Council's executive member for adult services, said he was aware of one firm that had pulled out of the Council contracts for home care, but that there were at least a dozen other providers on a waiting list.

He said: "Firstly, the £12.50 rate that we pay is close to the average of local authorities in the region.

"In an ideal world we would like to be able to pay more, but even if we do there is no guarantee that this is passed on by the firm to employees.

"We are looking at ways of ensuring this as part of the commissioning process, so that providers pay a better rate to the people they employ, but we can't currently dictate this to providers.

"There are firms that still think they can do business for that rate, as we have a dozen firms waiting to get on our approved list.

"We have to look at the bigger picture and work within the financial restrictions that we have. The adult social care financial situation we are in is already a ticking time bomb."

Councillor Jeanette Sunderland, leader of the Liberal Democrats on the Council, said the authority paid its trainee care workers more than an experienced care worker in the private sector receives. She added that the authority was going to increase its own care workers' wages to the so-called living wage, which is currently £7.85 an hour.

Cllr Sunderland said: "It is creating a two tier system of wages in Bradford which is massively unfair to the thousands of care workers who are in some instances being forced to work for less than minimum wages.

"I was visited recently by workers who were not paid for travel and had to attend staff meetings and training in their own time.

"This is being forced on them by the Council's purchasing power dominating the market. Bradford is heading for a crisis in social care that it can avoid."

Councillor Jackie Whiteley, Conservative spokesman for adult services, said a review of the amount paid by the Council was in process, and she hoped it would increase the £12.50 rate.

She said: "It's about the quality of care the end user gets. We are talking about a vulnerable set of people and we want them to get the best care possible."

Cllr Whiteley said the Council was planning to pay all its staff the Living Wage, and said it would be "hypocritical" if it did not allow its home care contractors to do the same.