A CHARITY with more than 30 spare places in its community for people with learning difficulties is being urged to take on more vulnerable people.

As the crisis over the lack suitable care for people with learning disabilities in the UK deepens, campaigners involved with Botton Village, on the North York Moors, say there is desperate need to open its spare capacity to more people.

An NHS-commissioned report this week called for a major overhaul of care for people with learning disabilities and highlighted a lack of suitable care in the country.

The report was commissioned after a BBC Panorama investigation revealed staff at Winterbourne View hospital being physically and psychologically abused and calls for the end of institutional care.

At Botton Village, near Danby, people with learning disabilities are looked after in family-style units where volunteer carers - known as co-workers - share a home with them.

The village also provides work for its residents according to their abilities, such as farm work, food production or craft-making.

The Camphill Village Trust (CVT) which runs the community is making changes to the shared living ethos and is bringing in paid shift-workers instead, which has prompted fierce protests.

The CVT has also placed a cap on the number of residents with learning disabilities it will accommodate. In recent years the number has fallen from 132 to 96 and protestors say the extra capacity needs to be made available to families desperate for their disabled children to join.

Chief executive of CVT, Huw John, said the restrictions were put in place following concerns raised about Botton by the local authority.

“We currently have a voluntary admissions restriction in place at Botton, as agreed with North Yorkshire County Council," he said. "This means we are unable to admit any new beneficiaries at this time whilst we work through an improvement plan within the community.

“This was put into place following concerns raised about Botton by the local authority.

“It is normal practice in the social care sector for providers to self-impose such restrictions whilst they address concerns and bring about improvements.”

But North Yorkshire County Council said today (Wednesday, November 26) it had no concerns about Botton.

Anita Bennett tried in vain to get a place in the community for her 27-year-old daughter, Isabel, who has Down’s Syndrome. Anita moved from Gloucester to the Danby area when she was told by CVT her daughter could only get a residential place at Botton Village if she lived in Yorkshire.

But once they moved, in 2011, they were told a cap had been placed on learning disabled residents and she could not live there, or have day care.

She said: “There’s so many elderly women going into their sixties, with children with learning disabilities. I want Isabel to be part of some kind of intentional community so when I die she will be part of something; so that trauma won’t be so great. You don’t want to let them lose on an uncaring bunch of people.

“The tax payer has put so much money into this place and millions of pounds from donors have been spent on it. What right do the management have just to sit on this?”