Purpose

Annual inflationary uplift for the
independent care market. Approval required.

 

Content

RESOLVED
 
KEY DECISION
 

That the Executive approved an
uplift in fees paid to adult social care providers to support
providers in meeting the additional financial pressures including
National Living Wage for frontline carers inflationary
pressures.

 

Provision
Type

Recommendation

Net increase in
cost £’s

Home Care framework

Uplift from April 2026: the Urban
Hourly rate by 2.32% to £23.88; the suburban hourly rate by
2.22% to £24.92; the Rural Hourly rate by 2.04% to
£27.01; and the Extra Rural Hourly rate by 1.82% to
£30.26; resulting in an average uplift percentage of
2.1%.

 

Uplift the support at home
standard and enhanced hourly rate from April 2026 by 5% to
£22.05 and £24.19.

 

Total

£995,250

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

£88,655

 

 

 

£1,083,905

 

Older Persons Residential
Care

Increase the expected to pay rates
from April 2026 by up to 12% to £837.31 per week.

 

£350,000

Older persons Dementia Residential
Care

Increase the expected to pay rates
from April 2026 by up to 6% to £897.53 per week.

 

£700,000

Older Persons Nursing
Care

Increase the expected to pay rate
from April 2026 by up to 6% to £973.60 per week (excluding
funded nursing care).

 

£180,000

Older Persons Dementia Nursing
Care

Increase expected to pay rate from
April 2026 by up to 6% to £1,054.73 per week (excluding
funded nursing care).

 

£465,000

Working Age Adults Residential
Care

No uplifts from April 2026,
combined with a targeted programme of work to review
accommodation-based service expenditure. Uplifts to be considered
later in the year (applied from December 2026), as indicated by the
review programme once it has concluded.

 

£135,000

Supported Living and Supported
Accommodation Providers

No uplifts from April 2026.
Framework rates to be set on conclusion of the current
recommissioning of these services. All expenditure to be included
in the targeted programme of work to review accommodation-based
service expenditure.

 

£0

Day Opportunities

Increase session rates by 4.1%
from April 2026.

 

£148,000

Independent Living Framework
(Extracare)

Increase care and support hourly
and core payments by 2.96% from April 2026.

 

£10,000

Direct Payment increase where
personal assistants are employed

 

Increase hourly rate for Personal
Assistants (PAs) by 4.1% to meet National Living Wage from April
2026.

£215,000

Total

 

 

£3,286,905

 

 

Reasons for
Recommendations

 

•        
The National Living Wage (NLW)
increase for 2026/27 is 4.1%. This compares to 6.73% in 2025/26,
9.8% in 2024/25 and 9.7% in 2023/24. In addition to this we know
that providers continue to face broader inflationary pressures, in
particular: the impact of the changes to National Insurance in the
2024 Autumn budget; and the impact of the Employment Rights Bill /
employment reforms, including changes to statutory sick
pay.

•        
Our Benchmarking data which
compares our expenditure as a Council with other local councils and
our CIPFA comparators shows that, while our overall adult social
care spend per adult is below the national average, our spend on
working age adults (18–64) is materially higher than peer
councils. In 2024/25 we spent £397.42 per younger adult,
compared with £332.50 for England (around 19.5% higher). We
also recorded higher average costs per younger adult supported than
the national position. Whilst we have been working with providers,
individuals, families and other experts to look at ways to address
this through current recommissioning, this alone is not enough. The
proposed uplift approach and targeted programme of work for working
age adult (18-64) accommodation-based services (residential,
supported living and supported accommodation) seeks to address
this, whilst ensuring care and support is outcome focused,
independence enabling and least restrictive.

•        
The care and support market in
North Northamptonshire continues to experience difficulties with
the recruitment and retention of care staff with a vacancy rate of
6.2% (600 vacant posts) in 2024/25 (similar to 2023/24; which was
3% lower than in 2022/23) and a turnover rate of 23.4% for care
providers (0.6% lower than in 2023/24). [Source: Skills for Care
Workforce Intelligence published 15 October 2025.]

•        
Whilst this is an improving trend
the data continues to demonstrate that providers still face
challenges in recruiting and retaining staff locally, this is
evidenced by high numbers of staff working with certificates of
sponsorship across all Adult Social care markets

•        
The ability of providers to
recruit and retain a sufficient workforce has been one of the key
challenges and risks for the sector for some time. By effectively
targeting our annual uplifts we support our contracted care
providers’ ability to develop strategic responses to
workforce challenges, including offering rates of pay that are
competitive with other local sectors.

•        
The position in North
Northamptonshire is in keeping with the national picture (23.4%
turnover compared with the regional average of 24.7% and England at
23.7%; 6.2% vacancy rate lower than the regional average of 7.3%
and similar to England at 6.8%). Alongside targeting our
inflationary uplifts, we continue to work in partnership with our
contracted providers to make social care an attractive career
proposition within North Northamptonshire.

•        
We continue to work with providers
to offer and signpost to training and development opportunities.
However, fee reviews remain a crucial lever in ensuring providers
can support social care as being an attractive career option for
people in North Northamptonshire.

•        
There continues to be a need to
utilise non-framework providers for some types of provision and to
commission individual packages of care with these non-framework
providers. There has been a significant decrease in the number of
non-framework providers commissioned; however, many of these
providers continue to be comparatively more expensive on a unit
(hour or week) basis.

•        
Non-framework provision can be
costly to the Council, and the proposed uplift seeks to positively
influence existing framework contract supply through retention and
sustainability whilst also incentivising an increase in supply
through levering better rates of pay and reward for our framework
providers. Work continues to minimise our utilisation of
non-framework providers and to focus our commissioning activity
with our framework providers.

•        
Our strategy is to focus our
development and commissioning activity specifically with our
framework providers. We are focused on utilising our enhanced
provider offer for framework providers that includes training
opportunities, an enhanced quality monitoring and support function
and access to other resources solely for framework providers. This
enables the Council to support improvement in the quality of its
framework-contracted care and support providers, secure a
sustainable market of high-quality providers and secure value for
money in our independent care spend.

•        
A benchmarking exercise of older
adults residential fees has demonstrated that additional investment
is required into this segment of the local social care market. Less
than 50% of placements for standard older adults residential
placements have been with a framework provider. Our benchmarking
has demonstrated our framework fees for these specific placements
do not compare favourably with comparable authorities. This is
driving an increase in higher average weekly fees for new
placements. When we uplifted the Expected to Pay rate for nursing
in 2025/26 by 17%, this increased the average weekly cost per
person by only 1.2% to 1.4%. Utilising a similar approach, the
proposed older adults residential fee uplift will increase the
number of placements with framework providers, resulting in a net
decrease in the cost of new standard older persons residential
placements with the Expected to Pay Rate set at £837.31 for
standard older persons care (12% increase) and £897.53 for
more complex / dementia older persons care (6% increase). This
reduction is built into the Council’s Medium Term Financial
Plan.

 

Alternative Options Considered:
The alternative options, in summary, considered
included:

 

Option
1: Do nothing and apply no
uplifts (Not recommended)

 

Option
2: Target uplifts only at specific service types
(Not recommended)

 

Option
3: Combine an uplift in
fees for all other adult social care framework services, with a
targeted programme of work to ensure working age adult
accommodation-based expenditure is in line with national
benchmarks. This is to support providers in meeting the additional
financial pressures including National Living Wage for frontline
care workers, whilst maintaining expenditure within budgetary
limits and ensuring a sustainable provider market
(Recommended
Option)

 

Option
4: Apply a reduced uplift
to the whole market including non-framework and framework providers
(Not recommended)