7.7% boost to care home nursing fee welcome, but pressure on sector ‘relentless’, says provider body

NHS fees for care homes to fund nursing services will rise by 7.7% in 2025-26, the government has announced.

The increase in NHS-funded nursing care (FNC) will benefit more than 75,000 care home residents in England, said the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

FNC is designed to fund services provided to care home residents by a registered nurse involving either the provision of care, including performing procedures or administering medicines, or the planning, supervision or delegation of such care.

The latest rise, which follows a 7.4% increase last year, will take the standard rate of FNC from £235.88 to £254.06 per week from 1 April 2025. The higher rate, paid to the relatively few residents who received it when the three previous bands were merged in 2007, will increase from £324.50 to £349.50.

Independent providers’ umbrella body Care England said this was the tenth year in which it had worked with the department to ensure that FNC increases reflected the rising costs of care faced by providers.

‘Threat to sustainability of social care nursing’

However, while its chief executive, Martin Green, said that the 2025-26 increase was “a step in the direction”, he warned that the “sustainability” of nursing in social care settings was under threat.

This was as a result of the upcoming rise in employer national insurance contributions – expected to cost providers in England £940m in 2025-26 – and the “shrinking wage gap” between care home nurses and lower-paid staff, due to above-inflation rises in the national living wage.

Care England chief executive Martin Green

Green also referred to the “increasing burden of delegated healthcare tasks”, under which nurses train and supervise care workers to carry out healthcare tasks, such as injections.

He said the rise in the FNC needed to be followed by integrated care boards increasing the rates they pay social care providers for NHS continuing healthcare (CHC) by at least the same amount. CHC involves the full funding of a person’s health and social care by the NHS on the grounds that they have a “primary health need”.

Green added that, without such a rise in CHC rates, “we risk a system where providers simply cannot afford to provide nursing care, which will add to hospital discharge challenges”.

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