Have Your Say: NHS-funded Nursing Care rate 2024/25

Dear Care England member, 

The Department of Health and Social Care is currently in the process of setting the 2024-2025 rate for NHS-funded Nursing Care (FNC).

This is being informed by a one-off cost collection exercise, run via Capacity Tracker. The survey is non-mandatory. The survey will be live from Wednesday 25 October and will be open for three weeks, closing midnight on Wednesday 15 November.

A recent report by LaingBuisson calculated that nursing care costs were reported at an average of £335 per week higher than residential care costs. The current FNC rate is £219.71.

As such, there is a significant gap that the sector now has the opportunity to address. Historic cost of care exercises conducted by Mazars, LaingBuisson and, more recently, the DHSC have resulted in a significant uplift to the FNC rate.

Care England would therefore encourage all care providers who operate nursing homes to actively engage in this cost collection exercise and provide the requested data via the Capacity Tracker tool.

When you complete the survey, please ensure that you have data on the number of residents by funding type and payroll information on both pay and hours worked by registered nurses for the two months of April 2023 and September 2023 (or your most recent completed payroll period) to hand.

You should be able to see a link to the survey when you log into Capacity Tracker. If you have any questions, please contact the DHSC FNC inbox at fnc@dhsc.gov.uk

The official announcement from the Department of Health and Social Care can be read here.