Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has dropped plans to make most foreign care workers already in the UK wait 10 years or more to settle, giving staff a clearer reason to stay, though the rules have still to go before Parliament.
Most frontline care workers will be paid more from 1 April 2027 after the Government accepted the Low Pay Commission's advice in full, but the announcement does not say how councils or the NHS will fund the increase in care.
Care and catering bodies have written to Prime Minister Andy Burnham asking that nutrition and hydration become a pillar of the National Care Service, because most malnourished older people live in the community, not in care settings.
The Care Quality Commission found around 223,000 fewer adults in England receive council-funded long-term care than 20 years ago, while councils overspend their adult social care budgets and the care market reshapes around small agencies and big investors.
The UK Covid-19 Inquiry found care homes were left exposed in the pandemic and made eight recommendations, but Prime Minister Andy Burnham has set no timetable or cost, and England is offered only a voluntary register of care workers.
Care homes in England will be fully exempt from the High Value Council Tax Surcharge when it starts in April 2028, according to Care England: a new cost removed, but no money added to care.
Commissioning and markets · Market shape
Care home beds in England run by the ten largest operators · October 2026
Note: Counted under the operator that runs each home; a home registered twice is counted once. Do not add the bars up across groups: Welltower owns the buildings of many homes run by Care UK, Barchester and Avery, which count under those operators. The Welltower bar is the homes CQC registers under its Welltower brand: HC-One (7,474 beds; Welltower is reported to own HC-One), Ideal Carehomes and Welltower's own operating companies.
Source: CQC register of care services, Baton calculation (opens in a new tab) Published 23 October 2026
Cinnamon Care Collection homes in England are hosting pupils to hear a new picture book explaining dementia, which the group made with its own dementia coaches.
Dunham Care, part of the McGoff Group, says it has about £550m of planned care home schemes in England, starting with a 51-bed Cheshire home this year.
Colliers says it has sold nine care homes once run by the Qualia Group, with about 550 beds, after the High Court ruled on a fraudulent room-investment scheme.
Business Companion offers care homes a free guide to the 2024 DMCCA consumer law, which bans hidden add-on charges and fake reviews and gives the CMA tougher powers.
Ofsted's revised inspection guidance sets out when children can live in CQC-registered care homes, warning that a home run wholly or mainly for children may count as an unregistered children's home.
Local Government Minister Jim McMahon says unitary councils will still replace two-tier areas covering up to 40 councils that run social services, but from April 2029, a year late.
Former care minister Norman Lamb told Nesta's podcast The Fix that running a National Care Service centrally, NHS-style, would be a disaster, though common national standards would be fine.
ADASS president Phil Holmes welcomed the Budget's changes to Carer's Allowance for unpaid carers in work, but said it missed a chance to invest more in adult social care.
Health Secretary Yvette Cooper has dropped plans to close Healthwatch England and its roughly 150 local branches, and the Government says their role will now grow.
Chancellor John Healey told Parliament the Government will scrap the carer's allowance earnings cliff edge, which can leave unpaid carers worse off for earning more, in a cost-of-living package.
Polling for Alzheimer's Society, released on Autumn Budget day, found 79% back more government investment in dementia and 72% support the charity's proposed 18-week maximum wait for diagnosis.
Care England chair Angela Boxall pressed for change at a London event on 27 October, citing its finding that women hold 78% of adult care jobs but 41% of board seats.
A Community Care poll found 77% of 492 social workers back Prime Minister Andy Burnham's free personal care pledge for older people in some form, though many say it ignores working-age adults.
The Prime Minister told MPs on 28 October he would meet a senior MP and wants cross-party agreement on a new care system that does more for family carers.
As the NHS winter plan for 2026/27 lands, the care and health leads at ADASS say prevention, reablement and getting people home matter more than adding hospital beds.
Dubai-listed Amanat Holdings says its Cambridge Health Group has bought Cornerstone Healthcare, which runs four specialist homes with 283 beds in southern England, from Ignite Growth for an initial £71m.
CQC has rated Saxon Lodge, a Canterbury care home supporting people with dementia, inadequate, down from good, after finding seven regulatory breaches in July, and put it in special measures.
CQC has rated The Chimes, a Stoke-on-Trent home for older people run by Sonic Gold Limited, inadequate and put it in special measures, citing poor leadership and unrecorded safeguarding incidents.
NHS England figures show 66.7% of over-65s thought to have dementia held a diagnosis at the end of September, meeting its ambition for the first time since the pandemic began.
Lord Hunt has put forward a Health Bill amendment giving people in care homes and hospital patients a legal right to name a relative or friend for in-person support.
The NIHR is supporting AD-SMART, a UK trial that tests several possible Alzheimer's medicines side by side against one placebo group, which it says cuts testing time by more than half.
CQC has cut Ideal Care Services - Kent, a Tunbridge Wells home care agency, from good to inadequate, put it in special measures and stopped it taking on anyone new.
CQC has given Woodside Place, an Exemplar Health Care nursing home in Telford, an outstanding rating at its first inspection, praising staff for helping residents gain independence.
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