Swindon Council has faced criticism over a “smokescreen” shrouding its home care costs.

Coun Peter Mallinson (Con, Walcot), the cabinet’s head of adult care, faced demands to explain why he made the choice to axe the council’s in-house home care service, claiming they were too expensive and inefficient.

The health scrutiny committee called for a report into how all the service’s costs stack up, in a bid to get to the bottom of the controversial move.

At the meeting on Thursday night, Coun John Short (Con, Highworth) demanded to know how private carers can be so much cheaper than council ones, since both get paid roughly the same hourly wage.

“Something is not right somewhere,” he said.

“If we’re going to make decisions in this way, then we need the full extent of what’s happening, not a smokescreen.”

The hourly cost of council-run home care works out at around £45, even though the carers themselves only see around £8.

It is claimed private carers can do the same job for around £15 per each hour of care.

The meeting also heard that the council’s home care team had not been meeting its target of 1,800 hours of care every week.

Instead Coun Mallinson said it had dropped to just 500 hours, with bought-in care from private providers picking up the slack.

Coun Andy Harrison (Lib Dem, Penhill) said: “I’ve seen a report where the in-house service wasn’t even meeting 50 per cent efficiency.

“That’s horrendous. That’s something else we need to know and understand.”

Coun Mavis Childs (Con, Walcot) said: “If hours are being lost I’d say that’s purely bad management. We’re here to scrutinise and I don’t know where the truth starts and fiction stops.

“If it’s hours and they’re not working, that’s management’s problem, not theirs.”

Coun Mallinson said a report is to be circulated this week to all members of the committee, showing how the home care team’s time and money is spent.

Among the “inefficiencies” he has found in the department is 365 hours in wages paid to staff for attending trade union meetings in six months last year.

“Those 365 hours have to be covered. It’s just costs you’d look at and say: it’s not much.

“But once you add them all up, it’s how many pennies are there in a pound?”

In total, there are 9,000 hours of care which need to be delivered across the whole town each week, split among private carers and public.

At the moment, 8,500 of that is done by private firms.

But from April onwards, all of that will be private and will be split among four companies.

Tomorrow, a petition of more than 8,000 signatures will be presented to the council from the home care team, begging it not to axe the service.