The Care Operator — Edition #3

Almost the weekend! This is the fast one — stories you might have missed, a useful resource, and the best thing we read this week.

🔴 Social care charging rates for 2026/27 are out. Published Monday by DHSC, and it's a mixed bag. The personal expenses allowance (PEA) for care home residents rises 3.8% to £31.80 per week. Minimum income guarantee (MIG) rates go up too. But the capital limits — the thresholds that determine who pays for their own care — are frozen again at £23,250 (upper) and £14,250 (lower). They haven't moved in years. That means more people with modest savings will continue to be caught paying full fees as inflation erodes the real value of those thresholds. If you run a care home, expect more self-funders asking difficult questions about what they're paying for.

NHS staff get 3.3% — but social care gets nothing. The government accepted the Pay Review Body's recommendation for a 3.3% Agenda for Change uplift from April 2026. On top of that, a landmark deal with the RCN means every Band 5 nurse in England will have their role reviewed, with additional funding for pay uplifts where nurses are working above their grade. This is significant for social care because it widens the pay gap further. NHS nurses get a funded raise plus career progression. Care workers get nothing comparable. The Fair Pay Agreement is still nowhere near implementation. If you're already losing staff to the NHS, this will accelerate it.

The Fair Pay Agreement is still coming — but don't hold your breath. The Employment Rights Bill includes provisions for an Adult Social Care Negotiating Body, which will set pay, terms, and training standards for care workers. No timeline yet for implementation. When it does land, it will be the biggest structural change to care worker pay in decades. Start thinking now about what a mandated pay framework means for your margins.

Local government finance settlement debated. The 2025/26 settlement was debated in the Commons on 11 February. Local authorities received £502m to offset direct employer NIC costs, but nothing to cover the indirect costs passed on by independent care providers. The Nuffield Trust estimates those indirect costs at £665m. Translation: councils have less money than they need, and your fee negotiation just got harder.

Durham County Council is doing preliminary market engagement for domiciliary care. If you operate in the North East, this is worth watching. Durham is engaging the market ahead of a potential recommission of domiciliary care, reablement, and short-term assistance services. Get on their radar early — these conversations shape the eventual tender specification.

The LDSS eligible courses list. If you're going to claim training funding before it runs out (and you should — see Monday's edition), you need to know what qualifies. Skills for Care has published the full list of eligible courses and qualifications for 2025/26, plus the claims guidance. It's at skillsforcare.org.uk under "Learning and development funding for adult social care." Bookmark it. Share it with your training coordinator. Submit your claims this month.

The House of Commons Library published an updated briefing on the adult social care workforce in England (12 February). It's dry — it's Parliament — but it's the most comprehensive single document on the state of the workforce right now. It covers vacancy rates, international recruitment trends, the Fair Pay Agreement, zero-hours contracts, and the impact of NIC changes on providers.

If you ever need to make a case to your local authority about why your fees need to increase, or explain to a bank why care sector margins are what they are, this is the document you cite. Search "CBP-9615" on the Parliamentary website.

£2.4 billion — Care England's estimate of the additional funding hole created by the National Living Wage increase (6.7%) plus employer NIC changes. Meanwhile, NHS nurses just got a funded 3.3% raise and a career progression package. Social care workers — doing equally demanding work — got nothing. That gap is the single biggest threat to your workforce over the next 12 months.

Two announcements this week tell you everything about where social care sits in the government's priorities. NHS nurses got a pay rise, a career progression deal, and a promise that every Band 5 role will be reviewed with funded uplifts. Social care workers got frozen capital limits and a charging circular.

The Fair Pay Agreement is supposed to fix this. But it's not here yet, and when it arrives, providers will bear the cost unless funding follows. The operators who survive the next two years will be the ones who planned for this — who built their fee negotiations, their recruitment strategies, and their business models around the reality that care worker pay is going up, one way or another.

Have a good weekend. We'll be back Monday with the week ahead.

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— The Care Operator