A Willesborough care home has been put into special measures and could be closed down after inspectors deemed it unsafe.

Sevington Mill was rated inadequate in safety, efficiency, caring, responsiveness and leadership in a damning report by healthcare watchdog, the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Inspectors visited the Sevington Lane home unannounced in November 2015 and found the service was unhygienic, understaffed and residents were at risk of serious infection and abuse.

Two inspectors even witnessed an incident where a person 'suffered harm'.

A spokesman for the CQC said: "Inspectors saw the incident and intervened. They reported it to the manager straight away and we put our own safeguarding alert into the local safeguarding authority."

A Kent County Council spokesman confirmed they are investigating a safeguarding incident at the care home and said: "Further to the CQC report, sanctions have been put in place and new admissions prevented to enable the home time to undertake required remedial action. KCC are working closely with the provider to improve standards."

The report found residents were unsafe, medicines were not properly managed, the site was unhygienic and as a result people’s safety had been compromised.

One patient had not had the correct medicine for 21 days, with no explanation why and had lost more than 17% of their body weight.

The medicines they had been prescribed were to supplement their intake of important minerals.

Staff told inspectors the person was "really poorly and deteriorating" but they had simply not had their required medication.

Single-person care at Sevington Mill, which is run by Veecare Homes Ltd, can range in cost from £400 to £800 per week.

A Veecare spokesman said they had hired a new manager and would be monitoring Sevington Mill closely.

He added: "We have apologised to our residents and their families. Action plans from the previous inspection were implemented but the home manager failed to sustain the action plan.

"As a result, the home has not met the standards that Veecare & CQC, had expected. We now have a new manager in place, who has 30 years’ experience in care. She is making lots of progress and we are confident that with her approach and leadership the home will be turned around fairly soon."

On its previous inspection in April 28, 2015, the CQC found the home to ‘require improvement’ and management was asked to put together an action plan to address the issues.

Worryingly, inspectors found that none of the actions required had been met and there were further areas where the provider was not meeting care regulations.

The report states that: "Staff described a culture of fear and bullying, in which they were afraid to speak out."

The service will be kept under review and re-inspected in six months but if standards don’t improve, it could face closure.