Social Care Campaign Comments
The impact of the NI increase on vulnerable sectors such as care homes and hospices is profound, eliciting strong emotions of injustice. Many significant employers have joined the cause, highlighting the pressing need for change.
Comments
Mark Jarman-Howe, Chief Executive
“St Helena Hospice welcomes the decision by the Government to make a one-off capital grant to English hospices. However, it is ever rising revenue costs and in particular the increase in employer national insurance contributions that is hitting the sector hard and will continue to do so for years to come. Right now, the country is losing vital hospice capacity with hard working nurses and doctors being made redundant and services being cut. This is a travesty and a long-term, fair and sustainable funding settlement for hospices can’t come soon enough. Until then we fully support the proposal for a change in Bank of England financial regulations providing an opportunity for the Government to inject essential funds into hospices, social care and GP services to offset the counter-productive and punitive increase in employment costs for essential care providers.”
Stephen Trowbridge MBE, First City Care Group
Stands with Box Power CIC – Urgent Action Needed. This is a direct attack on social care—and we will not stay silent.
The government’s refusal to exempt care providers from the National Insurance increase is nothing short of a betrayal. Care homes, homecare services, hospices, and disability support providers are already on the brink, yet they’re being hit with an extra financial burden while banks and other industries remain protected. Where is the fairness in that?
This reckless decision is pushing care providers closer to collapse, putting 1.2 million vulnerable people at risk and piling even more pressure onto the NHS. Bed-blocking will get worse. Services will be cut. Jobs will be lost. And once again, it will be the most vulnerable who pay the price.
Box Power CIC has presented a clear, practical solution—a 1% reserve requirement on banks that could generate £1.3 billion annually to offset these damaging costs. If the government refuses to explore this, they are actively choosing to let the care sector fail.
First City fully supports Box Power CIC in this fight. The care sector cannot keep absorbing the costs of government failure while financial institutions remain untouched. This is a crisis—and it’s time for the government to wake up.
Mark Lloyd, Managing Director
“the RMBI Care Co fully supports this request of Government to reverse their position on NI. As a social care provider with over 1000 beds the inequalities in care between self funders and state funded placements continues to widen with providers subsidising under funding. Adding a NI increase pushes providers over the edge when as a charity involved in providing a service to public funded people we should be exempted. Please as a matter of urgency reverse your decision”.
John Godden, Chief Executive
“Salutem Care and Education currently employs more than 3,000 staff to provide care and education for almost 2,000 individuals with the most complex of needs. Taxing us on employing those people is a significant retrograde step that has forced us to look closely at reducing our provision to balance the massive increase in employee costs. This is obtuse given the Governments stated, and necessary, aim to reduce the pressure on the NHS. This policy is having the direct opposite impact to that need as we will be reducing capacity which will have a detrimental impact on the NHS.”
Dr.Robert D. Kilgour, founder of Renaissance Care
“This should be about vulnerable people coming first before any party politics but you simply cannot fix the NHS without first fixing Social Care but we are still sadly seeing way too much NHS first and Social Care coming a very poor second! Recent Budget measures have delivered a real killer blow for our hard-pressed Social Care sector and if there are no changes made, I fear a tsunami of care home closures in the second half of this year and vulnerable elderly will die due to these budget measures.
Mike Padgham, Independent Care Group Chairman
“The Government seems to be doing all it can to destroy social care providers with the forthcoming ENIC increase and has missed a vital opportunity in delaying for years then much needed reforms. Investment in social care helps those who need support and also provides a boost to the economy.
“The government has ignored that social care employs 1.6m people and contributes £68.1bn to the England economy – with the right investment it could employ and contribute even more.
“Care providers want to grow, invest, and innovate, care for more people, employ more staff and help drive economic growth and aid the Government’s efforts to kick-start the economy.
“Instead, the sector continues to be left out in the cold and in crisis. Now 2m people cannot get the social care they need and that can mean others having to take time out of work to look after them, which is bad news for economic growth.”
Sue Livett, Chief Executive, Aldingbourne Trust
“We support people with learning disabilities and autism. “Every single report on social care, from Directors of Adult Services, to the Care Quality Commission is sounding claxons that the support that touches 1 in 3 of us is in crisis. Andrew Dilnot at the Health and Social Care Select Committee on 8th January convened to look at the impact of inaction by our governments summed it up – “it’s blindingly, bleedin’ obvious that something needs to be done”. The bombshell announcement and subsequent refusal to mitigate the impact of changes to Employer National Insurance contributions will have devasting consequences. Social care goes a long way to supporting people to live well. The proposal by Box Power offers a practical, fair way forward and deserves a hearing.”
James Rycroft Vida Healthcare
“To impose this increase onto social care is both brutal and naïve. The sector has been hit hard over the past years and this is just another unjustified blow to a service that is fundamental to our society.”
Keith Milton, Group Chief Executive, St Martins Care
“Residential care providers and hospices are an essential part of the wider healthcare system, supporting the NHS and vulnerable people. It is commonly accepted that social care has been underfunded for many years whilst, at the same time, facing a tide of increasing regulations and expectations around the quality of care provided. Add to this an aging population with increasingly complex care needs and many care providers find themselves close to breaking point. The last thing social care needs right now is further cost increases, especially the Government’s recent announcements on National Living Wage and Employer’s National Insurance without adequate funding. Early indications are the Local Authorities will not have funding to fully compensate care providers meaning that services delivered to the most vulnerable in our society are at risk which surely cannot be acceptable. We urge the Government and Local Authorities to reconsider the situation so that adequate funding is urgently made available. Until that happens, we fully support the proposal for a change in Bank of England financial regulations providing an opportunity for the Government to inject essential funds into social care services to offset the counter-productive and punitive increase in employment costs for essential care providers.”
Tony Stein, CEO, Healthcare Management Solutions
“HCMS has been providing turnaround, recovery, and management services to the residential care sector for over fifteen years and employs a team with over 1,000 years collective experience of delivering care in the UK.
The sector can be broadly split into two parts, one part serves the self-funding or private pay market, and the other the part funded by Local Authorities or the NHS. The self-funded market can, to some extent, mitigate increases in costs by increasing fees. The funded care part of the market is a price taker, dependent upon Local Authorities who set the fee rates. The recent Employer’s NIC increase for those serving the publicly funded part of the market is absurd. At worst, the increased costs are not met in full by the Local Authority, leading to poorer quality care, and/or services being forced to close. At a time when the population is aging, this is ridiculous. At best, the Local Authority covers the cost increase, creating an increase in government spending, so what’s collected in taxes is just paid back out, resulting in no benefit, but huge damage done in the process.
vulnerable who pay the price.”
Ash Desai, CEO
“Cedar Care Homes employs over 1,200 workers to provide care for almost 900 residents in our care homes. The massive impact of the increases in National Insurance, is forcing us to plan for some very difficult choices.… We don’t know how local authorities, and indeed overflowing hospitals will be able to cope if provision is restricted in this way.
Simon Van Herrewege, Prime Life
“For years we have endured successive administrations who wish to ‘talk the talk’ around social care reform, only to kick the issue further into touch. It has been widely reported that the care sector is under severe financial distress with reducing capacity and major recruitment deficits, and this government has decided to pile further pressure on by increasing the tax levy on employing such desperately needed staffing resources. Why is it so hard for them to see that good social care provision, homecare, community health services and hospices are crucial to our healthcare infrastructure and actually alleviate NHS capacity and cost pressures. Previously we had the vaccine mandate, which although extremely challenging in some cases, the social care sector mandated as a condition of employment…. only for the NHS to get a reprieve at the eleventh hour. Next we have had further visa employment conditions on foreign employees, only for the NHS to again receive concessions. Now we see the latest concession, but if the government can see the prohibitive cost burden this additional NI increase will cause the NHS, why can they not facilitate the same reprieve for the equally vital remaining care services whom are desperately in need. Short term thinking, a lack of leadership and real understanding/accountability seem to be the only consistent outcomes this sector has seen for many years from successive governments. They still have an opportunity to rebuild some level of unity by reversing this decision! services, hospices, and disability support providers”
A Letter to the Chancellor
A letter to the Prime Minister to profound a sense of urgency to propose a unique impactful initiative to help save the hospice sector from their ever-growing financial shortfall.
