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UK Adult Social Care Cost Index — Press Kit

Free, open dataset and ready-to-use story angles for journalists writing about adult social care costs in the UK. Refreshed annually from official NHS England Adult Social Care Activity and Finance Report (ASC-FR). Use freely with attribution.

Get the data

Licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Headline numbers

Source: NHS England Adult Social Care Activity and Finance Report, 2024-25. Last updated 2026-04-08.

Residential care home
£1,196
National median per week
Range £14–£13,314
Nursing care home
£1,239
National median per week
Range £114–£6,973
Residential and nursing care
£1,229
National median per week
Range £7–£5,167
Short-term care
£56
National median per week
Range £0–£42,000

Ready-to-use story angles

1. The nursing home postcode lottery

The cheapest council-paid nursing home rate in England is in Redcar and Cleveland at £620/week. The most expensive is in Suffolk at £1,205/week — a difference of £585 per week for the same regulated service.

See nursing care costs across all LAs →

2. Residential care home weekly fees

Council-paid residential care fees vary from £886/week in Wirral to £1,259/week in Reading. Self-funder rates are typically 20-40% higher than the council-paid average — meaning the same care home charges its council-funded residents one rate and its private clients another.

See residential care costs →

3. The £23,250 capital threshold has been frozen for 15 years

The means-test capital threshold for adult social care in England has been frozen at £23,250 since 2010. With residential care now averaging £1,185/week, an asset-rich/income-poor pensioner can deplete their savings to the threshold in under five months. The Conservative government's October 2025 reform was cancelled. Use Treatcompare's per-LA data to model how long someone in any English local authority would last before hitting the threshold.

Suggested attribution

Source: Treatcompare UK Adult Social Care Cost Index, derived from NHS England Adult Social Care Activity and Finance Report (2024-25). https://www.treatcompare.com/care-costs

Methodology in one paragraph

Treatcompare ingests NHS England's annual ASC-FR Provider Extract, joins each per-local-authority unit cost record with our static LA metadata, and renders 4 service-category pages × ~115 local authorities. Coverage is currently NHS England only. The figures shown are the council-paid rates that LAs pay providers — private self-funders typically pay 20-40% more for the same care. Full methodology at /methodology#care-costs.

Press contact

For interviews, custom data cuts, or chart embeds, email data@treatcompare.com. Treatcompare is a trading name of Indexeli Intelligence Limited (Companies House 17096578).