Social care costing NHS hospitals £900 million a year

A huge shortfall in the number of beds in UK care homes may place more pressure on NHS hospital beds which already cost £900 million a year.

Up to 3,000 elderly people will not be able to get beds in UK care homes by the end of next year, research by BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours programme reveals.

Increasing demand from an ageing population could see that grow to more than 70,000 beds in nine years time, and although local authorities in England have been given an extra £2 billion to help fund social care, one in 20 UK care home beds has closed in the past three years.

The research, conducted by property consultants JLL, shows that not enough beds are being added to fill the gap.

It found that since 2002 an average of 7,000 new care home beds has opened in the UK every year, but by 2026 there would be an additional 14,000 people needing residential care home places per year.

In the past three years, 21,500 care beds have closed in the UK.

People in the care industry worry that lack of bed capacity and increasing demand means there will be more pressure on NHS beds as the elderly are admitted to hospital because they can’t cope at home. The government predicts that this already costs the NHS in England £900 million a year.

James Kingdom, lead researcher from JLL, said: “We're currently building half the number of care home beds every year that we need."

"There are more people living longer.

"We know that over the course of the next decade there is going to be 2.5 million more over-65s, and as a result that means there is going to be demand for care home beds.

"To fix that, we need to double the rate of delivery.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health said that 61 per cent of people ‘are cared for in their own home, and since 2010 there has been a growth in home care agencies of more than 2,900’.

They added: “We've given local authorities in England an extra £2 billion boost over the next three years to maintain access for our growing ageing population and to put the social care sector on a sustainable footing for the future."