Plans to build a new dementia care home in Surbiton moved closer to confirmation following a Kingston Borough Council committee meeting earlier this week.

The Children’s and Adults’ Care and Education Committee voted Wednesday (February 13) to recommend funding to complete the project, Kingston Council revealed today (February 15).

The residential nursing home is due to be completed in late 2020 with the first residents entering the home in 2021, but will need to secure planning approval and pass further consultation processes before it is fully greenlighted.

Following the announcement, Councillor Margaret Thompson, Portfolio Holder for Adult Social Services said that the decision to recommend underlined the council's dedication to adult social care.

Cllr Thompson said: "The new home shows this council’s commitment to making sure that high quality care is available in the borough for those who need it most.

"By investing in this way the council can ensure that Kingston residents will have priority access to the very best in dementia care".

The council said that consultations with residents on Browns Road in Surbiton were ongoing and would be completed ahead of formal planning consultation scheduled for later this month.

According to council data, there are estimated to be over 1,500 residents in Kingston, including people under the age of 65, with dementia. It is predicted that this figure will rise to over 2,100 people with dementia by the year 2027.

Dementia and the associated conditions are an increasingly serious problem in the UK and other more developed countries in the global North with ageing populations, such as Japan and Germany.

According to Alzheimer’s Research UK, 850,000 people are living with dementia in Britain. The group's research also showed that in 2017, 13 per cent of all deaths in the UK were caused by dementia.

In light of the growing problems associated with dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK, the UK’s announced today it will use £300,000 to fund a pioneering clinical trial at King’s College London investigating a cannabis-based treatment for people living with dementia.

The trials will use the cannabis-derived drug Sativex® for the Treatment of AgitatioN in Dementia (STAND).

In November 2018 the government moved cannabis-based products for medicinal use to Schedule 2 – enabling their prescription by specialist clinicians.

Sativex® is a peppermint-flavoured mouth spray that contains a 1:1 ratio of two key cannabinoids found in the cannabis plant – delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD).

The plants are grown under a Home Office licence in the UK in highly controlled and secure conditions which, taken alongside high-tech manufacturing processes, ensures batch to batch consistency in each bottle.