MORE care homes will inevitably close because of tough new minimum standards on appearance, claims an estate agent who specialises in the sale of nursing and residential homes.

But Jonathan Wickens, associate director at Christie and Co, believes these standards will put the market on the road to recovery.

He said the standards, introduced from April, would end "a period of uncertainty which has dogged the nursing and care home industry for too long".

Yet the measures, which demand changes to nursing accommodation - such as the provision of minimum room sizes - have been blamed by many care home owners for putting them out of business.

Mr Wickens, representing the Leeds-based firm, said: "It is inevitable that more homes will close and be lost to the market."

But, he said: "The end result of further closures will be that those homes which are compliant, or can be made to be compliant, will benefit from improved occupancy rates.

"Improved occupancy levels, coupled with rising fees and tightly-controlled costs, add up to a successful business."

A number of North Yorkshire homes have already been closed because the cost of upgrading to the new standards has been too much to bear.

Pocklington town councillor George McManus, who has campaigned for more accountability for care homes which close, welcomed the report.

He said: "This is good news. It is nice to see that the commercial sector has started to realise the real benefits of what the Government and the independent health sector have been trying to achieve."

But Tony Hall-Jackson, owner of York Rise residential home, said: "My only reservation is that by making people's accommodation better you are not necessarily making their care better.

"The smaller homes, the ones not purpose-built, are finding it most difficult to conform."

York Rise, in Heslington Road, York, is set to close after planning permission was given to convert it into six houses.

Updated: 10:20 Saturday, February 16, 2002