Elderly residents, including one aged 103, have been evicted from a Sussex care home under police guard after inspectors shut it down saying that they feared for the safety of the people living there.

The care watchdog used emergency powers to shut Trevine Court, in Worthing, West Sussex, after a resident died at the £400-a-week private home. Residents and staff were given less than an hour to pack their bags and leave on Thursday evening. Family members arrived at the home, which can accommodate up to 30 people, to find relatives sitting on the driveway in wheelchairs or sobbing in their rooms as police officers waited in hallways.

Sean Adelphie, the owner of the home, told local reporters that it was a “disgrace” and predicted that some of the residents would die as a result of the abrupt move. The home had already been earmarked for closure earlier this year after concerns about standards. But the death of a resident in the past ten days, along with reports from social workers that they were refused admission to check on the welfare of others, led the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) to exercise its rarely used emergency powers of closure.

“The owners of Trevine Court advised us that they were planning to appeal to the care standards’ tribunal, but following more recent serious concerns, and a lack of cooperation on their part, we decided that we had no alternative but to seek an emergency order to close the home to protect the wellbeing of the residents,” the commission said in a statement.

A CSCI spokesman refused to confirm that a resident had died recently in suspicious circumstances, saying only that there had been a “safeguarding incident”.

The closure comes amid growing pressure about the standards of care being offered in some residential homes. Police are investigating the suspicious deaths of up to seven residents at a home in Somerset, exhuming the bodies of three to try to establish if they were poisoned, and two members of staff at a home in Oxfordshire were suspended after the death of a disabled teenager who was scalded in a bath.

Residents at Trevine Court spoke highly of the home, saying that they were sorry to leave. Mr Adelphie, who has owned the care home for more than 28 years, could not be contacted. However, he told the local paper that he would fight the closure: “Half of my residents are going to die because of this. It is an absolute disgrace”.

He denied he had not cooperated with social workers. “It is absolute rubbish. Social workers have been here for three days interviewing my residents and found nothing. What are they looking for? The way they have gone about this is absolutely disgraceful and my lawyers will be fighting this all the way,” he said.

But the decision for immediate closure was backed by social workers. “If it is judged that residents are in immediate danger of suffering harm, CSCI can require care homes to close immediately as in this instance,” a spokesman for West Sussex County Council said. “This is a decision that is not taken lightly and was made in the best interests of the residents living at Trevine Court. Eight residents have now moved to other accommodation.”

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