Rising numbers of care home residents in their eighties and nineties are being evicted and moved to cheaper facilities that do not meet their needs as part of cost-cutting by councils, The i Paper has been told.
Vulnerable people with dementia are among those being moved to homes they do not recognise, often chosen by social workers using online bidding systems. It moves them further away from visiting relatives, sometimes in the final months of their life.
This happens after their life savings, which have been covering the £1,000-a-week cost of their care, begin to run out and local authorities are legally obliged to take over the payments.
Managers of multiple care homes across the UK are issuing an urgent warning about so-called “care home evictions” which are becoming more common as council budgets are badly overstretched and can no longer cover residents’ existing bills – effectively forcing homes to terminate their contracts.
Unless relatives can afford expensive top-up fees, residents can end up confused, separated from friends and surrounded by strangers – risking potentially fatal “transfer trauma”.
The issue makes up part of the “broken” social care system that Andy Burnham has vowed to fix, pledging to use “some of my political capital” to do it.
The new Prime Minister is expected to ask the Casey Commission on social care to fast-track reforms, due in 2028, to the end of this year. This means a new system, including possible tax rises or new charges to fund it, could be in place during this Parliament rather than the next, as was expected under the existing timetable.
A growing issue
Evictions caused by council funding are a “growing issue”, warns Professor Martin Green, chief executive of the charity Care England. “It’s not about spreadsheets, it’s not about money. It’s about how this is impacting people’s lives – and in some cases shortening them.”
Social care is self-funded in Britain until personal wealth falls below various national thresholds. People in England, for example, only qualify for partial support when their assets are worth less than £23,250.
Under England’s Care Act 2014 plus devolved legislation in Scotland and Wales, local authorities must then ensure residents have suitable accommodation while retaining control over their day-to-day lives, as well as supporting their relationships, personal dignity and mental health.
Yet Green believes many councils are “flagrantly disregarding” these obligations by prioritising finances.
The i Paper revealed in December that nearly 7,000 people in England had contracts with their care home terminated via 28-day “notice to quit” letters in 2024, trebling the number from 2018. The Local Government Association (LGA) says most cases result from people’s conditions worsening, meaning they must move to receive different services, but care homes also blame council funding.
Managers say that escalating costs – worsened by the government’s increase in national insurance last year, restrictions on migrant workers and stricter employment laws – mean homes have had to raise fees, making it more probable that councils could refuse to pay them.
Brenda Miles was forced to move from her care home in Shropshire (Photo: Victoria Fellows/SWNS)Local authorities argue they are doing their best with limited means and have no choice other than to ration funding, after years of cuts to their grants from central government.
But campaigners highlight how Shropshire Council moved 98-year-old dementia sufferer Brenda Miles out of the home where she had lived for five years, giving her family and carers just 24 hours’ warning.
The widow had been paying her £4,000-a-week bill using the £240,000 from the sale of her bungalow in Bridgnorth, but when that was exhausted last year, the local authority insisted on transferring her to a home costing £2,400 per week instead.
Her niece, Victoria Fellows, told reporters in November that Miles was left asking: “Where are all my friends?” She emphasised that Miles’s original home was not at fault, but said the “upheaval” inflicted on the former book-binder by the council was “disgusting”. Shropshire says it cannot comment on individual cases.
It is understood that Miles has settled and is now doing well, but others may not be so fortunate.
When Shirley Littler needed to go into a care home, Worcestershire County Council gave her daughter Pamela Oakes a list of places that could take the 90-year-old for a few weeks while her needs were assessed. Pamela and her family chose The Gables care home in Kidderminster and paid for this initial period themselves.
From left, Shirley Littler with her children Emma, Pamela, Sue and Pete (Photo: Pamela Oakes)However after her assessment, the council proposed moving her to a larger home that would normally charge £1,350 a week but was willing to take Shirley for just £700. But there was a big downside: the only bed available was on a specialist dementia corridor. And Shirley didn’t have dementia.
Shirley was suffering from breast cancer at the time. Pamela says that after a morning of scans and biopsies, her mother’s social worker insisted Shirley view the proposed home that same afternoon, despite her being in pain and desperate to rest.
“By the time I got her there, she’d wet herself because we’d been in the car for an hour and she was crying. Even staff at the home said: ‘This is ridiculous, nobody should put her through this.’”
Pamela fought to allow her mother to stay at The Gables, sometimes dealing with several phone calls per day about the situation while maintaining her job running a Post Office branch. Eventually the council relented as long as relatives paid a £70 weekly top-up fee. The family clubbed together to cover it.
As her cancer spread, Shirley’s health deteriorated. Pamela believes that after all the uncertainty about her future, “she’d given up”. She died at the home in December.
Mark Fitton, the strategic director for adults and communities at Worcestershire County Council, said it recognises why decisions to move residents can be “concerning”. He insists: “In all cases, we work closely with individuals and their families to understand their needs and review decisions where appropriate, balancing these alongside our duty to use public resources responsibly.”
Families asked to pay top-up costs – or see relatives moved miles away
One British study into transfer trauma found decades of evidence that forced relocation in nursing homes is “detrimental to wellbeing, health and survival”, with higher rates of “post-move mortality”. A Dutch analysis of dementia sufferers found “definite evidence” of physical and mental declines.
Yet the problem of people being forced to move over money is “getting larger and larger”, according to Mike Padgham, honorary president of the Independent Care Group which supports hundreds of homes in Yorkshire. “It’s very unfair,” he says. “It’s immoral, the system we’ve got.”
The chief executive of one non-profit group that runs several homes in England admits about a dozen of their residents have been moved against their will since 2024.
“I’ve had two more cases today,” says the CEO, who wants to remain anonymous. “I know we’ll lose those people, they’ll be moved.” They fear it is becoming “a silent crisis” around the country.
Their organisation offers councils discounts on fees but sometimes local authorities ask for reductions of 40 per cent or more.
“We would be out of business within a year if we accepted that,” says the CEO. “It’s public money so they need to get best value, I understand that, but councils are making decisions that are indefensible… Moving people greatly increases the chance of that person dying sooner.”
For every pound spent by local councils in 2023-24, 39p went on adult social care – by far the biggest portion of their budgets. In England alone, total expenditure hit £34.5bn last year.
But the anonymous CEO accuses the government and councils alike of being in denial about the costs that homes have to cover, with the national insurance rise adding another £850,000 to their total last year.
Carers are worried about the health risks of moving elderly people into alternative homes against their wishes (Photo: Andrew Fox)When a local authority is informed a resident can no longer self-fund, social workers assess which services they need. If their current bed is deemed too expensive, councils typically list these people on online brokerage platforms, inviting homes to submit bids for them. It is usually the cheapest offers that are accepted, according to managers of homes.
To help their loved ones stay in their existing care home, relatives are sometimes asked by councils to pay top-up fees. But not everyone can spare hundreds of pounds a month and some residents have no family.
For patients with complex health issues, securing additional funds from the NHS for nursing care can be a further nightmare.
Helen Wildbore, CEO of Care Rights UK, says calls to her charity’s advice line from families worried about moves are becoming “increasingly prevalent”.
An LGA spokesperson confirms that local authorities cannot rigidly stick to funding limits. “Where ‘suitable’ accommodation alternative isn’t available, councils can be required to cover the cost of higher-cost provision.”
But Paul Ridout, a solicitor at HCR Law who has fought to secure funding for homes, says: “Local authorities are fighting as hard as they can with every trick in the book.”
People ‘punished for not dying quick enough’
Owners of care homes can face heart-wrenching decisions. Some battle with councils to secure more funding and prevent residents being moved, but doing this can mean they go months without receiving fees, potentially putting their business in danger or reducing standards.
Ali George, who owns the Aria home in the Welsh city of Newport, believes councils are “punishing people for not dying quick enough”.
George successfully fought to stop a woman having to move after seven years at his home when Newport’s Labour-led council refused to pay her fees. After a long dispute in which a Senedd politician became involved, the local authority eventually agreed to cover her costs as a rare exception, though she died a few months afterwards.
He is now battling another case that has lasted a year and a half. Aria is demanding £1,530 a week for a resident’s care costs but he says the council is refusing to pay more than £1,189.
Newport City Council claims that George’s account is “inaccurate and misleading”, maintaining it has “not acted unlawfully and has met its statutory responsibilities in relation to funding”. A spokesperson says that homes must terminate residents’ contract if their managers are unwilling to accept the council’s standard rate, and it will only pay higher fees in “exceptional circumstances”.
Ali George owns the Aria care home in Newport, Wales, and has been in several disputes with the council over residents’ funding (Photos: Ali George)Yasamine Watts runs three care homes with her mother in eastern England, including The Laurels in Lincolnshire, where she says the Reform-led council will only pay £729 per week. In some parts of the country, Watts says, “you couldn’t even stay at a Travelodge for that”.
It is below England’s average weekly care cost. That totals £1,074 for a frail older person with dementia in a residential home with 50 beds or more, according to data analysts LaingBuisson. Watts charges £1,250 per week as her homes are smaller, with just 20 beds in The Laurels.
She recalls how Lincolnshire County Council tried to move one woman who was nearing end of life when her money ran out. “Her daughter was beside herself,” she says. Watts eventually secured separate NHS funding for palliative care, but says the resident’s relatives were deeply upset by the council’s attitude.
In another case, she says, the council wanted someone who had been at her home for several months to move out of residential care altogether when his savings ran out. “They’d say: ‘He can wear an incontinence pad, we’ll put four calls in a day, he’ll be fine.’ He’s not going to be fine… He’d be living with dementia in the middle of nowhere. His son is hours away, with no friends or family to pop in and see him.”
Yasamine Watts runs The Laurels, a care home in the Lincolnshire town of Market Deeping, together with her mother Touran Watts (Photos: Yasamine Watts)Martin Samuels, executive director for adult care and community wellbeing at Lincolnshire County Council, says the authority wants to “support” care providers but faces a “very difficult” financial situation. Adult care costs account for nearly one-third of its entire budget, he adds.
He says the council “utterly rejects” any claims that it would “jeopardise” residents’ safety. “Their wellbeing is fully considered when deciding whether or not to move a former self-funder… We always ensure that their needs remain fully met if they are moved.”
Financial pressure on councils
Experts accept that councils are hamstrung by their financial woes. In the decade from 2010 to 2020, cuts to grants from Westminster meant councils’ overall spending power reduced by 27.5 per cent in real terms, accounting for population growth.
Although the situation has improved somewhat in recent years, that has not made up for increasing demand for social care from an ageing population.
The LGA says councils are focused on “the wellbeing of their local people” and “continuity of care” remains a priority but adult social care is “in desperate need of reform and sustainable investment” to deliver “equal access”.
The Burnham Government aims to create a national care service in England, although exactly how this would work remains unclear. The Prime Minister has asked Baroness Casey, who is conducting an audit of the system, to bring publication of her report forward from the current deadline of 2028. Similar ambitions in Scotland and Wales have been pushed back.
A spokesperson said: “Local authorities, providers and families should work together to find appropriate placements and funding levels for anyone needing care. They must also make sure an affordable provider is always an option.”
@robhastings.bsky.social
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