A watchdog has taken action against a Holloway care home after reports of elderly people stuck in their rooms and not getting their medicine.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has placed Lennox House, in Durham Road, into special measures after its rating plummeted from “good” to “inadequate” in the space of just six months.

The latest report, released on Thursday, came after an unannounced inpection in January – and blasted the home’s leadership.

It found many of its 87 residents were missing medicine due to a lack of stock and staff errors, while there was little effort to stimulate people – with many stuck in their rooms.

And Lance Walker, whose 76-year-old mum moved to Lennox House in October last year, told the Gazette: “She has been in hospital since Thursday. I was told she was going for a scan. It turned out she has a fractured hip from a fall. There’s a lot of this kind of thing in the report.”

Last month, when there was a faulty plug in her room, Mr Walker arrived to find an electrician leaning over her to fix it while she was asleep.

And two weeks ago, he found a “faeces-ridden face cloth” in her bathroom, which staff had failed to clear away.

Mr Walker added: “Where is her dignity? To be fair, there is a new manager who needs time to turn things around. But there has been an inherent lack of leadership. I wish I had never moved her there.”

Alison Murray, the CQC’s head of inspection for London, said: “It is disappointing that standards at Lennox House have fallen. Although almost everyone we spoke with who used the service, relatives and friends, praised staff for their caring attitudes, we found significant shortfalls in the quality of care people received.”

Care UK, the UK’s biggest independent provider, runs Lennox House and faces losing control of it if standards don’t improve within 12 months.

Operations director Chris Hopkinson said: “Even before this report arrived, our own internal audits had identified this home was experiencing some issues and we had already started to implement a detailed action plan to bring standards up to the high levels we expect and residents deserve.”