A CARE home which allowed a 91-year-old dementia sufferer to freeze to death in her bed did not have facilities to check temperatures, a court has heard.

Annie Barritt was found with a core temperature of 25.3 degrees centigrade - nearly ten degrees below the hypothermia threshold of 35 degrees - at Oaklands Country Rest Home, in Kirk Hammerton, North Yorkshire, in November 2012.

A sentencing hearing at York Crown Court was told today when a nurse tested the temperature of the mother-of-two and retired shorthand typist it did not register on a standard thermometer.

Mrs Barritt died later that day at Harrogate District Hospital, where the care home staff had been warned days earlier that she needed to be kept warm.

One of her sons, David Barritt, told the court he would always be haunted by the thought he was responsible for her death by placing her at the home.

David Hercock, prosecuting for Harrogate District Council, said the firm running the home, Maria Mallaband Care Group Ltd, which runs dozens of other care homes, including Willowdene, in Sedgefield, Skell Lodge, in Ripon and Rosedale, in Catterick Garrison, had an operating loss of £4.2m last year and lost £1.78m in 2014.

The firm has admitted a health and safety charge relating to Mrs Barritt’s death.

Mr Hercock said staff had no way of measuring room temperatures and were left to make their own decision on whether a room was warm enough.

James Maxwell-Scott, mitigating, said inspections from the Care Quality Commission, North Yorkshire County Council and a doctors’ group did not hold them to account for failing to measure temperatures.

He said: “It was a responsive and responsible organisation. After this very sad event the defendant installed thermometers in all of its 2,600 rooms across its estate.”

Judge Paul Batty, QC, will sentence the firm tomorrow.