A care home told to improve nine months ago has been found to require improvement yet again.

The Lynton Hall Nursing Centre in New Malden was home to 41 older people, some of whom suffer from dementia, at the time of the Care Quality Commission inspection in August.

Since the previous inspection, at which communal bathrooms were found to be full of equipment and emergency pull chords were judged to be too high, improvements were noted.

In December last year there were not enough staff members to support people who needed help with their meals.

The latest inspection found this had improved, with staff sitting with people who required help.

The most recent report, published on September 4, said: “We saw that people who ate in their bedrooms had their food and drinks within reach and staff checked that they were able to manage their meals.

“We observed that people were encouraged and helped to be as independent as possible with eating and drinking and to make decisions about what they ate and drank.”

But the report stated food and fluid intake charts were infrequently completed.

The report said: “An example of this was that in one care plan the food and fluid chart for one day had only one entry listed, a yoghurt. Another three entries indicated again only a yoghurt eaten.”

Staff had not developed an action plan after six falls were logged in the accident or incident record, the report added.

Care plans did not include information about people’s personal history, backgrounds or interests either.

This meant staff were found not to have all the tools to understand the person they were providing care for according to the report.

A spokesman for Lynton Hall said residents and their families had commented on improvements.

He said: “We acted immediately to address the issues they [the CQC] raised, including employing a number of new staff members, providing additional training and improving the storage of our equipment and medicines.”