The number of registered care homes fell to 12,224 on May 31 from 12,280 at the start of the year, according to data shared with the Financial Times by carehome.co.uk, a care home review site.

The rate of closures in England slowed in the first half of 2023, compared with the same period in 2022. However, a rise in mortgage rates threatens to increase the burdens on the care sector, compounding rising food and fuel prices and funding shortfalls.

“We are facing some extremely challenging times,” said Nadra Ahmed, chair of the National Care Association, a professional body. “There are vulnerable providers out there right now and there are a lot [of homes] that will be on the market.”

The challenges encountered by some operators would make their businesses “unviable”, she added, citing Pelham House in Kent as one of the latest to hit financial trouble. “Sadly they had to make the decision after 40 years to shut their doors,” she said.

“If you’ve got mortgages that’s going to have an impact on your ability to repay your borrowings.”

The Bank of England increased interest rates by 0.5 percentage points to 5 per cent in June in an effort to tame inflation, leading to rises in monthly mortgage repayments for borrowers on variable rates.

While interest rates are not expected to climb by as much as previously estimated following better than expected June inflation data last week, care providers are already feeling the heat.

Jay Dodhia, chief executive and co-founder of Serene Care, established with his wife Palvi, renovates and runs failing care homes. He said its model had been resilient but cautioned that rising interest rates could be particularly challenging for new builds.

“Most care homes are [on] variable rates — even when rates were very low it was very hard to get fixed rates on care home mortgages,” he said. “As the variable rate or the underlying BoE rate crept up, so have our interest payments.”

“Everything in isolation will affect you, if you put it all together — the rising inflation, utilities, food costs, staffing challenges . . . it could be a death knell for several [providers],” said Dodhia.

The number of councils in England reporting care home closures in their area rose to about 44 per cent at the end of May 2023, according to the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, a charity.

Natasha Curry, deputy director of policy at the Nuffield Trust, said in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, the level was about a third.

“With borrowing rates also rocketing, it’s not a surprise that we’re seeing more closures of care homes and I think it’s inevitable that trend will continue,” said Curry.

During the Covid crisis, an injection of emergency government funding had helped to stabilise the market, cushioning the impact of falling occupancy rates. But that funding had ended.

Cathie Williams, joint chief executive of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, said councils had a duty to provide “continuity of care” for residents if a home closed.

But a decade of austerity, Brexit, the pandemic and staff shortages compounded by surging living costs had contributed to “a considerable lack of resilience” in the sector.

Where care places existed, “it tends to be because they’re in the wrong place or the wrong kind of care home or the quality is not good enough”, she added.

Health leaders warned of the effect of diminishing capacity in social care on the wider health system. Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation which represents health organisations across the UK, said health leaders knew “all too well the impact that a lack of social and residential care has on the NHS”.

The support provided to residents in care homes could prevent avoidable hospital admissions. Moreover, a lack of available care home places for patients who could otherwise have been discharged from hospital could create “a log jam effect in A&Es with long ambulance waits”, Taylor added.

“The good news is we can see the rate of closures slowing in England and Wales although unfortunately Scotland has seen a rise,” said Richard Stebles, head of business intelligence at carehome.co.uk.

“In order to stay sustainable, we are likely to see care providers trying to attract more privately funded residents who pay higher fees than those funded by the local authority.”

Dodhia said the average fee for publicly funded social care bed should be £900 per week. But local authorities are often paying about £600 to £700 a week; some are willing to spend just £490 a week.

Care home operators had hoped for more funding from local authorities following a “cost of care exercise” that sought to generate a shared understanding of the cost of adult social care. But some councils struggled to increase payment and reforms were pushed back to October 2025.

Providers have also fought to access the £200mn earmarked for the NHS crisis plan, which aimed to move patients from hospitals to care homes.

A “winter discharge fund” had been announced, said Dodhia, but “local authorities didn’t really want to spend it”. He added: “They knew that as soon as that funding ran out then the residents would be left vulnerable, because they can’t continue to fund [the scheme].

“We heard about all these great support plans but we didn’t see any of it,” he said.

The Department of Health and Social Care said it was investing up to £7.5bn in social care over the next two years — “the biggest funding increase in history” — to boost capacity in social care, including £1.4bn that local authorities could use flexibly, including to pay social care providers more.

It added: “Despite the pressures the adult social care market faces, the number of adult social care locations registered with the Care Quality Commission has remained stable, and there are 6,600 more home care agencies in England now compared to 2010.”

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Leke Oso Alabi

The rise in temperatures has led to the spread of mosquito-borne diseases to higher altitudes and areas of the developed world where they had previously not been prevalent.

There are about 3,600 known species of mosquito. The native range of the Asian tiger mosquito is in south-east Asia, but it has been spreading since the 1960s and was discovered in Albania in 1979. It is now present in much of southern and central Europe.

“Last year, France recorded its worst ever number of dengue cases that were vectored by [the Asian tiger mosquito],” said Steven White, theoretical ecologist at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.

The presence of this mosquito in the UK was first discovered in 2017. “It was likely that the mosquitoes were introduced from across the channel on transportation, however, it is not believed that they were able to establish,” White said. “This may change in the near future under climate change.”

A separate species of concern is the common house mosquito or Culex pipiens. “This species is resident to the UK, our modelling work indicates that [it] is likely to increase in abundance,” said White.

“Culex pipiens is a vector of West Nile virus, which is currently absent in the UK, but could be introduced via migratory birds,” he added. “Our work suggests that increases in temperature may make the risk of West Nile virus outbreaks in the UK in the next few decades more likely.”

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This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Leke Oso Alabi

The involvement of the Financial Conduct Authority comes amid growing concerns over what the hackers may have accessed. Over the weekend, The Pensions Regulator confirmed it had written to the hundreds of pension funds that employ Capita to help administer their payment systems, urging them to “determine whether there is a risk to their scheme’s data”. 

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Leke Oso Alabi

But the 47-year-old was told that it would take months to see a specialist and even then she might not qualify for surgery since her bladder was unaffected. She turned to the private sector, paying about £12,000 to have an operation at the Spire Southampton hospital to correct a severely protruding spinal disc.

She is not alone. The NHS, which marks its 75th anniversary in July, has long been seen by Britons as a repository of cherished national values. But with the queue for planned surgery at record levels and long waits for a GP appointment, millions are setting that fealty aside to buy care in the private sector.

Justin Ash, chief executive of Spire, the only listed UK private healthcare group, said the company’s hospital business was experiencing “unprecedented demand”. He added: “Obviously the waiting lists are part of the backdrop.”

But the business consultant said she had undertaken a “cost-benefit analysis”. Without the operation, she could not work. Within weeks of the surgery she had secured and started a new job. She still values the NHS and believes the UK is lucky to have a system of free healthcare. But her faith in it has been shaken.

“I just find it very, very frustrating . . . I was in horrific pain and the NHS wasn’t there for me,” she said.

One in 10 Britons made use of private healthcare before the pandemic, according to figures from the OECD. But more recent surveys show that NHS shortcomings are pushing more people to pay for treatment.

In the winter of 2021, the IPPR and YouGov found that 12 per cent of the population used some form of paid-for alternative care, with the proportion rising to 16 per cent for wealthier groups. A survey carried out by the Office for National Statistics in December 2022 puts that figure at 13 per cent.

David Furness, director of policy at the Independent Healthcare Providers Network, which represents private health companies, said recent IHPN polling showed that more than 1 in 5 people expected to use private healthcare in the next 12 months and almost half of the public would consider private healthcare if they needed treatment. The historically high level of waiting lists was driving even those who had never previously considered it to seek out private treatment, he added.

A separate survey of more than 1,000 small, medium and large UK businesses carried out for the IHPN pointed to a growing concern about the impact of long waiting lists on productivity and a willingness to consider private medical insurance for employees.

More than half of organisations were “concerned that the current rising NHS waiting times may result in employees taking long absences or permanently leaving work due to sickness”, Furness said. This rose to more than two-thirds of medium or large businesses and almost three quarters of those which had more than 1,000 employees.

Almost one in five employers were considering offering private medical insurance to their staff in the coming year — rising to almost four in ten (37 per cent) of businesses with more than 1,000 employees, he said.

Spire’s Ash confirmed the trend: “It looks to us like the underlying market for insurance is growing . . . so it’s not just self-pay which has been growing. It looks like employers are absolutely leaning into providing more insurance for their employees.”

Large insurers have seen a rise in demand. Aviva said the number of people covered by its private medical insurance had increased from 0.9mn in 2020 to 1.1mn in 2022.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Leke Oso Alabi

Since Brexit ended free movement of labour with the EU, the UK has relied on more non-EU foreign doctors. As a result 48 per cent of all current trainee GPs require visas, according to data from the British Medical Association.

Under current rules, individual GP practices must pay a fee of up to £1,500 to become a licensed sponsor of skilled migrant workers needing visas — a process that doctors’ groups said was more of a bureaucratic burden than a financial one.

A survey by the Royal College last year found that about 30 per cent of international trainees had considered not working as a GP in the NHS because of difficulties with the visa process.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Leke Oso Alabi

An estimated one in 50 people tested positive in England in the week to September 24, up from one in 65 in the previous week, according to the latest Covid-19 infection survey by the Office for National Statistics published on Friday.

Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland about one in 40 tested positive in the week to September 26, up from one in 80 a week earlier, the survey showed.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Leke Oso Alabi