Early interest in Blue Haven after Kiama council's sale decision

At an extraordinary meeting on Thursday, Kiama councillors voted 5-4 to start the sale process of Blue Haven's Bonaira aged care centre, while keeping the body's Terralong facility.

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Warrigal, which has previously acquired centres from IRT and BUPA, was interested in aligning itself with Blue Haven.

"Aged care and retirement living is a complex housing and service system, and it's hard to do it well without the size and strength of a big operator's resources," a Warrigal spokeswoman said.

"Blue Haven was started with assistance from Warrigal over 50 years ago, and Warrigal could potentially be involved again if Blue Haven wanted Warrigal to assist, or consider an arrangement such as a partnership.

"The region needs as many strong quality sustainable housing and care services as it can get, for its rapidly growing population of older people."

IRT would also consider taking over Blue Haven.

"As a community-owned provider of services for older Australians we are always interested in potential opportunities to extend those services," CEO Patrick Reid said, "and with the recent decision by Kiama Council to sell part of Blue Haven, we will examine the details when available."

Thursday's vote would seem to put to an end almost a year of debate on the future of Blue Haven, which was touched on by several councillors.

"Everyone else in the community is missing out because all we ever do is talk about Blue Haven," Cr Matt Brown said.

"I've added it up and we've had 30-plus reports [on Blue Haven] given to us. Thirty-plus reports and some councillors still don't think they can make a decision on our finances."

Cr Neil Reilly said opting to keep Blue Haven in its entirety would have serious consequences for the broader community.

"The consequences simply are that we will have to reduce costs and that that means an increase in rates, it means a reduction in services," Cr Reilly said.

The new motion came in the wake of a letter from Local Government Minister Wendy Tuckerman, which threatened Performance Improvement Orders, something Cr Reilly said called for urgent action.

Cr Imogen Draisma disputed whether selling Blue Haven would fulfill the "urgent" criteria.

"It would be remiss of us based on the information that we know about Blue Haven Boniara to believe that the sale of that asset and a commitment to the sale tonight would resolve the issues for the next two years," Cr Draisma said.

"We know that it's highly unlikely the sale would be executed in that time and as such we need to be divesting ourselves of other assets."

Among those opposing the new motion was Cr Kathy Rice, who said the motion was "premature" as councillors were still waiting for financial information that was requested five months ago.