Councils seek £50,000 care home cap

NO ONE should have to pay more than £50,000 of their own fortune for a place in a care home, leaders of shire counties said yesterday. They called for the cost of the cap, which would run to billions of pounds, to fall on the Treasury and the taxpayer.

The intervention from the County Councils Network comes in advance of the Government’s long-delayed green paper on reform of the care system.

The means-tested system for funding places in care homes is widely condemned as unfair because those who have paid mortgages and saved throughout their lives must pay, while those without savings or assets have their bills paid for them. David Cameron’s government had proposed a £72,000 cap.

A report from the council network said: ‘For more people in rural areas to benefit from a cap on care, it needs to be set at a lower level, potentially as low as £50,000. It is estimated that only one in ten people would benefit from a £72,000 cap.’

It said the cap must be fully funded.