In 2022, there were 408,371 people living in care homes in the United Kingdom. The population was higher in England than in any other part of the UK. In 2022, over 360 thousand people were living in care homes in England.

In 2022, there were a total of over ** thousand care homes across the United Kingdom. In the UK, roughly ** percent of care homes are residential care homes with nursing homes accounted for ***** in ten care homes.

Care Homes provide a residential setting for people that require 24 hour care. The majority of Care Homes provide services for older people, but some offer services to Children and those with Mental or Sensory Impairments.

All Care Homes in the UK are registered, inspected and listed by the relevant authority, which in England and Wales is currently the Care Quality Commission (CQC) There are two main categories of care home; those which provide only personal care and those which also provide nursing care. In addition, some Care Homes provide specialist care, eg for Dementia or Terminal Illness

Care Homes are often run by groups. In these instances we provide the group name and details and record a link from each home to its parent organisation, but we list each home as separate entities due to each having their own considerations/services.

Type of ownership:

The database details the type of ownership of the Homes

Private Homes run by individuals, partnerships and public and private limited companies.

Voluntary Homes that are run by Charities such as The Leonard Cheshire Foundation or Mencap.

Public Homes that are run by Local Authorities and NHS Trusts

Number of beds:

We list the number of Beds for each organisation. The average size of home is approximately 20 beds, whilst only 10% have more than 50 beds. There are almost 3,000 homes with five or fewer beds. These usually provide very specific types of care, including provision for Care in the Community and, if privately owned, should not normally be regarded as commercial undertakings.

The UK has an ageing population – for the Residential Nursing Care industry, this is an opportunity for growth with demand for more beds expanding. Homes have upped their average weekly fees, contributing to revenue. High inflation over the two years through 2023-24 has raised fees further. However, state involvement has limited growth, which has kept care fees artificially low for many nursing home residents. Residential nursing care revenue is anticipated to remain stable at £9.3 billion over the five years through 2024-25, including revenue growth of 3% in 2024-25. Weak government funding and wage cost pressures caused by the rising National Living Wage (which will increase to £12.21 in April 2025) have constrained profitability. Labour supply shortages caused by high turnover rates have been of particular concern. According to Skills For Care, the job vacancy rate in 2023-24 in the adult care sector was 8.3%, way above the average rate in the UK economy. That being said, the vacancy rate is declining thanks mainly to a government-driven recruitment drive to attract overseas workers, which has been helped by reducing visa requirements. Rising real household disposable income had supported more self-funded residents, aiding residential nursing care. However, data from the ONS revealed the percentage of self-funded residents fell from 36.7% in 2019-20 to 34.9% over the year through February 2022. In the year through February 2023, this has risen again to 37% of the 372,035 care home residents. Families are still struggling with the rising cost of living, reducing the number of people able to afford private care home costs, which has somewhat constrained revenue growth. Over the five years through 2029-30, residential and nursing care revenue is estimated to expand at a compound annual rate of 4.1% to £11.4 billion. Robust demand from an ageing population will support industry growth. However, plans for adult social care reforms are to be released in two stages (the first in 2026 and the second in 2028), which has caused greater uncertainty for the sector's future. Staff shortage concerns will continue to plague nursing care.

In 2021, there were 15,200 residential adult social care homes in England, these establishments provide care and support for older and disabled people. That year, there were 11,900 non-residential adult care homes in England. Over the provided time interval the number of residential care homes decreased, while the number of non-residential care homes has increased since 2009.

As a result of the Coronavirus (COVID-19), there were over 15 thousand deaths in care homes in England and Wales between April 10 and April 24, 2020.

This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify usual residents aged 65 years and over living in a care home in England and Wales. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.

Residential and nursing care homes Additional metadata: - Licence: http://reference.data.gov.uk/id/open-government-licence

Context

Provisional counts of deaths in care homes caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) by local authority. Published by the Office for National Statistics and Care Quality Commission.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/numberofdeathsincarehomesnotifiedtothecarequalitycommissionengland health.data@ons.gov.uk

Content

Number of deaths in care homes notified to the Care Quality Commission, England

Acknowledgements

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/numberofdeathsincarehomesnotifiedtothecarequalitycommissionengland health.data@ons.gov.uk

Photo by Susan Yin on Unsplash

Inspiration

Across the world, figures reveal horrific toll of care home deaths. Statistics showed that Covid-19’s elderly victims have paid a heavy price due to the Pandemic.

In 2023/24, the occupancy rate of care homes in the United Kingdom (UK) rose to **** percent, which is approaching pre-pandemic occupancy levels of 87-89 percent. Following the Covid-19 pandemic, the care home occupancy rate in the UK fell to an average of **** percent. These were the lowest occupancy rates recorded since 2006 and reflect the consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The average number of years care home residents aged 65 years and over are expected to live beyond their current age in England and Wales. Classified as Experimental Statistics.

Retirement homes have faced a challenging period. They depend on self-funders or local council funding that covers the retirement needs of people who satisfy financial assessment means tests. Tightening government budgets have meant publicly funded fees have failed to cover providers’ operating costs in recent years, forcing retirement homes to cross-subsidise local authority beds with fees from self-funded residents. Revenue is anticipated to inch down at a compound annual rate of 0.2% over the five years through 2024-25 to £10.3 billion, but it’s set rise by 1.1% in 2024-25. Much of this is down to care homes fees mounting to cover costs and being paid for by self-funders, who are seeing their disposable income levels tick upwards in 2024-25. Although the ageing population supports revenue, constrained government spending, delayed reform changes and rising costs (particularly for labour) have put pressure on profit. Demand for beds far outstrips the supply, which is driving investment into the industry. The COVID-19 pandemic caused revenue to decline significantly in 2020-21, but the successful roll-out of vaccinations significantly reduced the death rate in care homes. This, combined with mounting demand from residents who had delayed joining a retirement home during the lockdowns, contributed to strong growth in revenue in 2021-22. Care homes fees then edged up in the three years through 2024-25 to cope with enhanced staffing costs, mounting mortgage payments and heightened energy costs – these were all the result of high inflation. This has been to the dismay of many retirees whose purse strings have tightened thanks to the cost-of-living crisis, making hit harder for them to afford to move into retirement homes. Higher fees have therefore dampened some of demand for beds, but they’ve also increased the overall takings of care homes. Retirement home revenue is expected to climb at a compound annual rate of 1.9% over the five years through 2029-30 to £11.3 billion, driven by an ageing population. By 2036, the number of people aged 85 and over will hit 2.6 million, representing 3.5% of the UK population, according to the Office for National Statistics. However, medical advances will make an older population healthier, allowing people to live independently for longer, dampening growth.

In 2022, residential care in the United Kingdom was most expensive in the South East, Scotland, and London with weekly fees of over *** British pounds. Care homes vary in the type of services they offer to elderly people. Residential care homes, for instance, are suitable for adults who are mostly independent but could use some assistance in day to day living such as dressing, washing, doing laundry or taking medicine. Nursing homes, on the other hand, offer 24-hour medical supervision. An ageing population increases the importance of retirement living properties and services that suit the needs of residents.

This is a monthly report on publicly funded community services for people of all ages using data from the Community Services Data Set (CSDS) reported in England for February 2025. It has been developed to help achieve better outcomes and provide data that will be used to commission services in a way that improves health, reduces inequalities, and supports service improvement and clinical quality. These statistics are classified as experimental and should be used with caution. Experimental statistics are new official statistics undergoing evaluation. More information about experimental statistics can be found on the UK Statistics Authority website (linked at the bottom of this page). A provisional data file for March 2025 is now included in this publication. Please note this is intended as an early view until providers submit a refresh of their data, which will be published next month.

Care homes including, name, number of rooms by type (nursing, nursing EMI, residential, residential EMI) address and location.

For more information about Care Homes see: https://www.calderdale.gov.uk/v2/residents/health-and-social-care/residential-and-nursing-care-page

From 2018 to 2021, Care UK Nursing & Residential Care Services opened the most care home in the United Kingdom. During this period, this operator opened ** new care homes. The care home operator which opened the second most homes in the UK was Barchester, with **** openings.

The objectives of the study were:
to establish whether self-funded people who are admitted to residential care differ significantly in terms of financial assets and informal support from elderly people in private households;
to establish the extent to which self-financed residents are admitted at levels of dependency that might have been maintained in the community;
to investigate the process of admission and whether those people with lower levels of dependency are admitted through choice or lack of access to appropriate alternatives;
to investigate factors associated with the choice of home;
identify the level of receipt of non-means tested benefits; and
to estimate expected length of stay of self-funded residents.

Number of council-supported permanent admissions of younger adults (aged 18-64) to residential and nursing care divided by the size of the younger adult population (aged 18-64) in the area multiplied by 100,000. People counted as a permanent admission include: Residents where the local authority makes any contribution to the costs of care, no matter how trivial the amount and irrespective of how the balance of these costs are metSupported residents in: Local authority-staffed care homes for residential careIndependent sector care homes for residential careRegistered care homes for nursing careResidential or nursing care which is of a permanent nature and where the intention is that the spell of care should not be ended by a set date. For people classified as permanent residents, the care home would be regarded as their normal place of residence. Where a person who is normally resident in a care home is temporarily absent at 31 March (e.g. through temporary hospitalisation) and the local authority is still providing financial support for that placement, the person should be included in the numerator. Trial periods in residential or nursing care homes where the intention is that the stay will become permanent should be counted as permanent. Whether a resident or admission is counted as permanent or temporary depends on the intention of the placement at the time of admission. The transition from ASC-CAR to SALT resulted in a change to which admissions were captured by this measure, and a change to the measure definition. 12-week disregards and full cost clients are now included, whereas previously they were excluded from the measure. Furthermore, whilst ASC-CAR recorded the number of people who were admitted to residential or nursing care during the year, the relevant SALT tables record the number of people for whom residential/nursing care was planned as a sequel to a request for support, a review, or short-term support to maximise independence Only covers people receiving partly or wholly supported care from their Local Authority and not wholly private, self-funded care. Data source: SALT.Data is Powered by LG Inform Plus and automatically checked for new data on the 3rd of each month.