Fair cost of care and market sustainability

Fair cost of care 

As part of the Government's charging reform proposals, we needed to complete a fair cost of care exercise to understand the local cost of providing care in the 18 years plus home care and 65 years plus care home markets.

We also had to develop a Market Sustainability plan detailing how we plan to move towards a fair cost of care (where this is not already being paid) over the next three years.

We identified the lower quartile, median (the median is the middle number in a set of sorted numbers) and upper quartile costs in the local area for the following care categories:

• 65 years plus care homes:
  • standard residential care
  • residential care for enhanced needs
  • standard nursing care
  • nursing care for enhanced needs
• 18 years plus domiciliary care

For the purposes of the exercise, the Department of Health and Social Care considers ‘fair’ to mean the median actual operating costs for providing care in the local area (following completion of the exercise). ‘Fair’ also means what is sustainable for the local market. This is, on average, what local authorities are required to move towards paying providers, with support from funding made available to local authorities.

Last updated 28 February 2024