Homecare providers are being underpaid for their services by the majority of local authorities in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The UK Homecare Association (UKHCA), the professional organisation for domiciliary care providers, has discovered that just one in seven councils in the UK paid independent and voluntary sector homecare provider fees at or above UKHCA's minimum price of £15.74 an hour.

This guide price has been calculated to include – as a minimum – compliance with the National Minimum Wage (NMW), including the time spent travelling between service users’ homes.

UKHCA was able to gather data from 203 of the 211 councils – or health and social care trusts in Northern Ireland – it approached. It found that just 28 of these bodies were paying the minimum rate or above.  

The average price paid for homecare in the UK was £13.66 an hour, with trusts in Northern Ireland paying the lowest average rate of £11.35 an hour. Councils in Wales were paying the highest amount at £14.28 an hour.  

Commenting on the findings, UKHCA's Policy Director, Colin Angel, said: “Low prices paid for homecare services carry a number of risks, including poor terms and conditions for the workforce, insufficient resources to organise the service and insufficient training for the complex work that supports the increasingly frail and disabled individuals who qualify for state-funded support.”

Mr Angel warned that unless this underfunding is addressed “the care market will become commercially unsustainable for the providers who deliver most of the homecare purchased by the state within the UK.”

The report makes recommendations for councils, providers and government in all four UK administrations, including effective oversight of authorities' commissioning practices by independent regulators.

It also calls for transparent costing exercises and urges the governments in each UK administration to ensure that purchasing authorities have sufficient resources to pay the necessary fees.