Average nursing home now costs £1,000 per week

AVERAGE nursing home fees have reached £1,000 a week for elderly people who finance their own care.

Fees tipped four figures for those needing the greatest level of care, while people in residential homes must now pay an average of £700 a week. This drops to £486 for council-funded residents, the report by analyst LaingBuisson found.

“About 10 per cent of existing nursing care capacity is in the £1,200 per week plus bracket,” the report said.

Fees have been increasing rapidly as councils struggle to pay care homes enough to cover their costs.

Social care has become one of the key issues of the election campaign, with Theresa May set to unveil a pledge today to let workers take time off from their jobs to look after elderly relatives.

Earlier this year a report by the communities and local government committee found that those funding their own care paid an average of 43 per cent more than state-funded residents for the same room and care.

In most cases older people must pay for their own residential care if they have assets worth more than £23,250.

The Laingbuisson report added that the introduction of the new living wage will put more upward pressure on fees.

Homes will have to increase charges by at least 3.9 per cent every year to maintain their profits, it said.

Owain Wright, of the not-for-profit agency Care Funding Guidance, which advises families on care home fees, said: “We always say to families to plan for fee increases. They never seem to go down. In the past couple of years, because homes have been taking on a great deal of extra cost, we’ve seen double-digit rises in some areas.”

The report calls on the Competition and Markets Authority to examine whether the higher fees paid by selfpayers are fair. It said: “The CMA may wish to consider whether the wide disparity in fees paid by local authorities and self-payers for the same level of accommodation and service amounts to a cross-subsidy which results in detriment to the consumer.”

William Laing, the report’s author, said that a national shortage of statefunded care home places could be imminent as businesses were no longer able to survive on the low fees offered by councils.