Social care 360: access

1. Requests for support

There were 2 million new requests for publicly funded social care in 2024/25

Why is this indicator important?

New requests for support to local authorities are the best available marker of demand for adult social care services. 

What was the annual change?

Due to a change in the data source and methodology, it is not possible to compare the number of requests for 2024/25 with previous years.

In 2024/25, there were 2.0 million requests for support made by people new to social care. Of these requests,1.3 million were from people aged 65 and over and 665,000 requests were from people aged 18 to 64.

A person can make more than one request for support in a year. Overall, 1.4 million people made the 2 million new requests for support in 2024/25, of whom 868,000 (64%) were aged 65 and over and 490,000 (36%) were aged 18–64.

Around 4 in 5 requests originate from the community, with most of the remainder (17%) coming from hospital discharge.

What is the longer-term trend?

Due to a change in the data source and methodology, it is not possible to compare the number of requests for 2024/25 with previous years. The trend from 2015/16 to 2023/24 is given below.

Between 2015/16 and 2023/24, using the previous methodology and data source, requests for support from working-age adults increased 31%, from 501,000 in 2015/16 to 658,000 in 2023/24. Among older people, requests increased 9%, from 1.31 million to 1.43 million. Overall, the increase was 15%, from 1.81 million to 2.1 million.

What explains the trend from 2015/16 to 2023/24?

After a fall in 2020/21 during the Covid-19 pandemic, when requests from older people fell sharply, in 2021/22 requests returned to the general trend seen since 2015/16, of increasing demand for social care services.

This is likely to reflect both an increasing older population and increasing disability among working-age adults: 24% of working-age adults reported a disability in 2023/24, compared to 16% in 2012/13.

What happened in 2025/26?

In addition to data about the number of requests for support, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has begun to publish official statistics in development showing the number of assessments that local authorities carry out. In September 2024, 48,000 people received local authority assessments, compared with 50,000 in September 2025.

2. Access

More people are now receiving publicly funded adult social care 

Why is this indicator important?

Receipt of publicly funded long-term and short-term care are the key measures available to assess the extent to which demand for social care is being met. The data does not, however, include receipt of care by self-funders, who do not qualify for publicly funded support, and so it lacks nuance about the level of care that people require and whether this is changing. (see indicator 1, requests for support). 

What was the annual change?

The number of people receiving publicly funded long-term care* rose 3%, from 859,000 in 2023/24 to 889,000 in 2024/25. This was made up of a 4% increase in the number of 18–64-year-olds receiving long-term care (from 300,000 to 313,000), and a 3% increase in the number of older people receiving long-term care (from 543,000 to 576,000).

Due to a change in the data source and methodology, it is not possible to compare receipt of short-term care to maximise independence (ST-Max) in 2024/25 with 2023/24. The number of people receiving ST-Max in 2024/25 was 245,000. This was made up of 29,000 people aged 18–64 and 216,000 people aged over 65.

What is the long-term trend? 

Since 2015/16, there has been an increase in the number of working-age adults accessing long-term care during the year, from 285,000 to 313,000 (10%), and a fall in the number of older people receiving long-term care – down from 587,000 to 576,000 (2%). Overall, 889,000 people received publicly funded long-term care in 2024/25 compared to 873,000 in 2015/16, an increase of 2%.  

However, when increases in population size are taken into account, there has been a fall in overall receipt. In 2015/16, 6.0% of people aged 65 and over were receiving long-term care, but by 2024/25 this had fallen to 5.2%. The percentage of the working-age population receiving long-term care was largely unchanged, at 0.9% in 2015/16 and in 2024/25.  

Due to a change in the data source and methodology, it is not possible to compare receipt of short-term care to maximise independence (ST-Max) in 2024/25 with previous years.  

With ST-Max, under the previous data source and methodology, between 2015/16 and 2023/24, there was an increase in provision both for working-age adults (up from 21,000 to 29,000, (35%), and older people (up from 190,000 to 223,000 (17%). 

What explains this? 

The long-term trend in the number of people receiving long-term care can be divided into two parts: a fall from 2015/16 to 2021/22 and an increase in the following three years.

From 2015/16 to 2021/22, despite rising requests for support, there was an overall fall in the number of people receiving publicly funded long-term care, from 873,000 to 818,000. This change was made up of a 1.4 % increase in the number of working-age adults (from 285,000 to 289,000) but a 10% fall (from 587,000 to 529,000) in the number of older people receiving long-term support.

Three factors drove this:

• Between 2015/16 and 2021/22, local authorities faced a real-terms cut in their overall spending power but still managed to increase spending on social care in real terms. However, they had to pay more for the care they commissioned because provider costs increased due to the minimum wage. To balance budgets, they reduced the amount of care they commissioned.

• Covid-19 additionally had an impact on demand and supply in 2020/21, with older people in particular reluctant to come forward for support and reductions in the number of services provided due to Covid-19 restrictions.

• As England came out of Covid-19, workforce capacity limited the amount of services that could be offered: adult social care vacancies rose to a record 10.7% in 2021/22.

In the three years from 2021/22 to 2024/25, the number of people supported with long-term care rose 9% from 818,000 to 889,000. The number of working-age adults rose 8%, from 289,000 to 313,000, and the number of older people rose 9%, from 529,000 to 576,000. The factors driving this were as follows:

• There was an increase in demand after Covid-19, with overall requests for support rising by 5.4% from 2021/22 to 2023/24.

• There was an increase in workforce capacity. Vacancies fell from 10.7% in 2021/22 to 7% in 2024/25 as 185,000 people started direct care roles after arriving in the UK between March 2022 and March 2024 due to the loosening of visa regulations that allowed people to come to the UK to take up care worker roles.

• In 2023/24 and 2024/25, there was a significant increase in social care expenditure (4% in real terms) by local authorities, driven by the channelling of funds initially intended for adult social care reform into supporting the existing system instead.

However, one factor that will have reduced receipt of publicly funded long-term care over this period is the means test ‘threshold’ of £23,250. This is the value of assets that disqualifies people from receiving publicly funded social care support. This figure has not increased in line with inflation, and as a consequence, fewer people are likely to be eligible for support than would have been the case in 2015/16.

What has happened in 2025/26? 

Provisional statistics show a small continued increase in the receipt of long-term support in 2025/26. At the end of September 2024, 671,000 people were receiving long-term support compared to 683,000 at the end of September 2025.

*the statistics also include some people who pay for their own care but have it arranged by local authorities.

3. Financial eligibility

The means test keeps on getting meaner 

Why is this indicator important?  

Unlike the NHS, social care operates a financial assessment (a ‘means test’) to decide who is eligible for publicly funded care. The levels of this are set nationally and announced each year. The ‘upper threshold’ decides the level of savings and other assets people can have and still qualify to receive publicly funded care. The lower that figure is, the fewer the people who qualify.

What was the annual change? 

In 2024/25, the upper threshold remained at £23,250.

What is the longer-term trend? 

The upper threshold has not changed since 2010/11. If it had increased in line with inflation, in 2024/25 it would have been £10,404 higher at £33,654, meaning more people would qualify for support. 

What explains this? 

By not increasing the threshold in line with inflation, successive governments have made the means test even meaner: it has become harder for people to get publicly funded social care, reducing its cost to the taxpayer. However, another key measure, the Minimum Income Guarantee, which defines the lowest amount of income an individual needing care at home must be left with after care charges, has increased in line with inflation since 2021/22 – after several years of being frozen.  

The previous government had plans to increase the upper threshold to £100,000 and the lower threshold to £20,000 from October 2025, along with cancellation of the introduction of an £86,000 cap on lifetime care costs. However, in October 2024, the incoming Labour government cancelled these plans.

What has happened in 2025/26? 

The upper threshold remained at the same level for 2025/26 and 2026/27. Had the upper threshold risen in line with inflation it would have been £34,544 for 25/26 and £35,118 for 26/27¹. However, the Minimum Income Guarantee rose in line with inflation.