Older people (65 plus) Care Home market
There are 112 homes in Somerset that provide services to older people in Somerset. These homes have 5,090 beds registered with CQC and as of 5th February 2025 there are 608 admittable vacancies (12% of total beds). Total occupancy in these homes stands at 83% with the remaining 5% of beds either unavailable or reserved.
Of the 4,218 occupied beds, Somerset Council currently commissions 1,671 beds which is just below 40%. The number of local authority funded beds varies greatly in each home with the highest proportion of beds in one home being 86% and three homes where there are no local authority funded people.
There are concerns regarding the increased cost of National Living Wage (6.7%) and Employers National Insurance (1.2%) from April 2025 and the impact this will have on the cost of running a care home. These costs will be passed on to the local authority and private funders via increased fees and could have an impact on our ability to find people a care home placement as quickly as we have been over the past year. The current time to source a placement is 18 days from request to move date.
Longer term we believe there will be more demand for Nursing and Residential beds for people with mid to high levels of dementia. As of January 2023, NHS England estimated that just under 10,000 people in Somerset have dementia and this number is predicted to grow to 18,000 by 2035.
We have recently completed a procurement exercise for block bed contracts with care homes across the county, providing residential, nursing, and mental health support to people living with dementia. As part of our recommissioning efforts, we have written new specifications that emphasise the importance of developing specialism around behaviours that challenge in order to improve practice and support retention of our valued workforce.
Somerset Council wishes to reduce the number of people requiring Residential care over the next 10 years and key to this is an Extra Care Housing model that is fit for purpose. The success of this policy could impact upon a number of the care homes that are registered to provide residential care only. We will need to work with our provider market to identify homes that could be suitable for conversion to Nursing homes to meet future demands for these services. We will also work with Somerset Council’s planning team to ensure that any new care home applications are considered alongside our knowledge of the social care landscape in Somerset. This work will mean that we have the right care homes built in the right places to meet future demand.