The way large care home chains take care of their finances is high-risk and unsustainable, a new report involving the University of East Anglia has claimed.

The university's school of health sciences helped investigate chain-run care homes to find out how tax-payers' money is spent.

The report, titled 'Where does the money go?', claimed that care chain owners use high-risk high-return financial models which are inappropriate for welfare activities such as running care homes.

Dr Anne Killett from the UEA said: 'Local authorities typically pay more than £500 per week for each care home bed.

'The big care home chains say there is a crisis in social care which they blame on not enough money from local authorities who pay for more than half the beds.

'What we are seeing is that any profits made are privatised, but any costs, losses and debts are shifted onto residents, taxpayers and the workforce.

'The financial model for care homes should be low-return and low-risk.'

The report, from the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, said big chains should not be bailed out by the tax payer, as this would protect them from losses that are an ordinary risk of capitalist business.