A bed-bound pensioner with advanced Alzheimer’s is set to lose her home just before Christmas.

Lilian Wright, from Barking, is one of more than 40 people who will lose out as Ryedale Care Home, in Victoria Road, Ilford, is converted into a residential home.

The 78-year-old, who is fed through a feeding tube and has lived in the home for 15 years, has until the day before Christmas Eve to leave.

Her husband, Reg Arthur Wright, who lives on the Gascoigne Estate, said: “It’s disgraceful, it’s sickening and everybody is up in arms. I have been in a bit of a state.”

He was unable to hold back his tears as explained he had started to remove the pictures from the walls in his wife’s room.

Mr Wright, who has prostate cancer and leukaemia, said he is “wobbly” on his feet and had to decline another care home place for his wife found by Redbridge Council because it was difficult for him to access.

Nursing residents were informed of the changes in a letter last month.

The private home, which is run by European Health Care Group, has 58 clients, stated that the decision was taken after it was unable to “recruit permanent staff locally”.

A European Healthcare spokesman said the care home was closing its nursing services because “it cannot deliver the high standards of care we insist upon” and that the company had been working with Redbridge Council “to minimise the impact”.

A nurse from Redbridge, who worked at the care home, told the Post members of staff had been leaving because of the low pay and “impossible” working conditions.

Redbridge Council confirmed it was assisting 19 residents to find new nursing home places although it was “sometimes difficult”.

As he has every year, Mr Wright brought 10 large tins of chocolate to the care home staff for the winter festivities, but this year he won’t be there to celebrate with them.