A GP has defended his decision to close his care home and evict elderly residents.

Dr Haroon Siddique said he was left with no choice, but to close Willowdale Lodge care home because it was not financially viable.

The 12 residents at the home in Cromer Road, Southend, were given 28 days notice to leave by Dr Siddique.

Southend Council must now find new accommodation for the residents before they have to leave on December 18.

An application has been submitted to Southend Council to turn the building into five self-contained flats.

Dr Siddique, who has surgeries in Southend and Thorpe Bay, said: “When we took over the home last year it wasn’t doing well financially. Social services were quite surprised that someone had taken it on, but I’ve been a GP for 20 years and I was feeling that it was something I wanted to do.

“We had lots of problems with staff and management and went through a lot of changes, but we got a good rating from the Care Quality Commission in the summer. We did pretty well.

“The building has four double rooms making it difficult to accommodate people. We tried to make a plan to make them into eight single rooms and had plans drawn up, but we would have had to demolish the whole house. It is such a nice house, so we didn’t think that was appropriate.”

Asked why the residents were asked to leave so close to Christmas, Dr Siddique said: “This was for personal reasons. If we could have left it until January or February we would have done it.

“Having worked as a GP I’m not going to throw people out to be homeless at Christmas. We’ve done a lot of ringing around 25 care homes and there are 16 beds available so there is no shortage of beds. By the end of the week we expect to have only four to five residents left.” Dr Siddique said most staff at the home are being paid up until Christmas and all had found other jobs.

Contrary to previous information, that a resident member of staff had also been served notice to quit, Dr Siddique said there had been no employee living at the premises since October.