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Some care homes that offer residents a decent quality of life but fail to meet new standards will not survive, National Care Standards Commission chairperson Anne Parker made clear last week.

Responding to a delegate's question after giving the annual Graham Lecture in London, Parker said: "The standards will mean over time that some places will close that may have been lovely places to live."

However, she said that the NCSC recognised that it will not serve users by simply applying the standards as written and enforcing everything.

"Making homes go out of business, which may be quite good homes and may have the prospects of actually conforming in the foreseeable future, is not in the interests of those service users," she said.

Parker insisted that where there is risk, enforcement would be carried out "irrespectively", but that the NCSC will not come down too heavily in other circumstances during the first year.

"Certainly, in year one we'll only be using our more draconian enforcement powers when there is a risk to the health and welfare of service users and probably when that's linked with, or sometimes not linked with, a really poor history of compliance," she said.

Parker assured a delegate from Action on Elder Abuse, who expressed concern that too flexible a system allows providers to escape accountability, that complaints will be listened to. "We're not in the business of ignoring complaints and we will respond firmly and fairly with providers. Good regulation is not about collusion and cosiness, but about respectful working relationships," she said.

While the standards are not negotiable, the NCSC will let those owners who cannot achieve the standards in the short term to explain how they can still achieve positive outcomes, said Parker. Users will have the opportunity to say whether outcomes are delivered and what they consider to be the shortfalls in the standards.

She added that debate was necessary to get fee structures responding so that people were able to lose a bedroom or make one larger.

The NCSC is currently recruiting 300 inspectors. All inspectors will undergo "conversion training" between January and March to ensure they understand the new legislation and requirements.