Care home fees jump to a record £34k a year

CARE home fees hit an annual average of £34,000 last year – the biggest jump in nearly a decade, according to latest figures.

The price of a place for the frail and vulnerable in England rose by 4.7 per cent in the year to last March, the greatest increase since 2010. The rise is more than three times the level of inflation.

The squeeze on the elderly and their families emerged amid growing pressure on Boris Johnson and ministers to deliver on their promise to build a cross-party consensus for social care reform.

The Mail is campaigning for an urgent solution to the social care crisis, particularly for dementia sufferers.

A means test is forcing many Britons to sell their homes to pay for a care home place. The new figures, which are based on estimates from care industry analyst LaingBuisson, mean fees for a basic residential home in England are more than a third higher than they were in 2010.

The average weekly care home bill in England reached £655 last year – up by £30 in a year. The cost of similar accommoda

‘Vary from one district to another’

in Wales was £613 and in Northern Ireland the fees reached £539.

The estimates include charges for those who pay their own bills and those paid by local councils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, which subsidise residents with no savings or property.

Self-funders pay an average of 30 per cent more than councils, which use bulkbuying to force down costs, while home operators make up the shortfall by raising bills for people who pay their own fees.

In Scotland, where local councils pay the costs of personal care for every resident, average care home bills were £769 a week.

Typically, the cost of a place in a nursing home – where the price is pushed up by residents’ need for medical and nursing care – was £893 across the UK.

The report, from consumer group Which?, said: ‘Fees vary from one district to another. A care home in the South East averaged £783 a week in 2018/19 but the equivalent fee in the North West was £547. Care homes and nursing homes that provide specialist care for people with dementia usually charge higher fees than those who do not provide that level of support.’