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Private care homes in England are being shut down at a rate that is 22 times higher than state-owned facilities, raising questions over the quality of care in the independent sector, a study based on official data has found.
The Care Quality Commission, the industry regulator, has closed 816 care homes between 2011-2023, of which 804 were for-profit facilities, according to an analysis of the CQC data by a team at Oxford, Michigan and Roskilde universities.
The homes were closed for either putting residents at risk or failing to meet industry standards and affected an estimated 20,000 residents who were forced to move urgently over the period, the research, published in The Lancet medical journal on Tuesday, found.
According to the study, while 0.15 per cent of public care homes have been forced to close by the regulator, this number is much higher in for-profit homes, up to 3.3 per cent.
Benjamin Goodair, researcher at the department of social policy and intervention at Oxford, said the findings suggested the outsourcing model is “struggling to supply the quality of care deserved by the most vulnerable people in society”.
“Although rare events, the closures are likely to cause substantial costs to both the local authority and clients in need of relocation,” he added. Fifty-two of the homes forced to close had been rated as “good” during their last CQC inspection, with most of these in the private sector.
Although the costs of residents are sometimes paid or partially paid for by the state, care home providers argue that fees have not kept pace with rising wages, energy, labour and food inflation.
Campaigners and health leaders have warned that the sector is under massive strain and action is urgently needed to tackle a chronic workforce crisis, with demand for social care rising because of an ageing population.
A plan to limit the amount an individual in England would have to pay towards their personal social care was put on hold in 2022 by chancellor Jeremy Hunt.
Some health experts have said the policy, which has been on the statute book since 2014, is central to addressing the risk of an individual facing catastrophic care costs.
Last year, the independent public spending watchdog warned that the UK government was failing to co-ordinate and track the progress of its £1.7bn plan to improve the quality of England’s social care over the next decade.
The National Audit Office, the public spending watchdog, said more than £1bn of the budget had already been reallocated to deal with “other social care priorities”.
Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, the largest representative body for independent social care services, said many charities have embarked on care home closure programmes and will only take publicly funded residents if fees were topped up by local authorities or the NHS.
“The fact that we have lost over 800 care services at a time when the need for social care is significantly increasing is an indicator of the fragility of the sector,” he added.
The CQC said: “We hold private and publicly funded services to account in the same way. If services are not providing the level of care people are entitled to and deserve, we take action regardless of how they are funded.”
Eighty-five per cent of care homes are now run by the private sector, up from 78 per cent in 2011, according to the CQC. Care homes were among the first social services to be outsourced by local authorities and the NHS to the private sector in the 1980s.
