The Fair Pay Agreement for adult social care in England, explained
The first Fair Pay Agreement for adult social care in England has £500 million for 2028/29, but whether that money reaches care workers depends on council fees that already fall short in home care.
Published 29 October 2026 · 7 min readWorkforce· EnglandPublished by We Are Care · Editor Joel Dawson
Care workers at private and voluntary providers in England are getting something the sector has never had: a national deal on minimum pay, terms and conditions, agreed by negotiation and then made binding in law.
That matters to anyone who runs or commissions care. Once the deal has legal force, providers must pay it. Whether the money to pay it reaches them depends on council fee rates that, in home care at least, already fall short of today's legal minimum.
An England deal: Wales is building its own, Scotland has separate arrangements
The Fair Pay Agreement and the body that negotiates it are specific to England. They do not apply in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.
Wales is setting up its own Social Care Negotiating Body under the same Act, the Employment Rights Act 2025. Scotland has separate arrangements for its social service workforce. A provider with services in more than one nation should not assume an agreement reached in England reaches staff elsewhere.
The rest of this piece is about England.
What is a fair pay agreement?
In plain terms, it is a sector-wide deal on the lowest pay, terms and conditions an employer can offer part of the adult social care workforce in England. A new body negotiates it. Regulations under the Employment Rights Act 2025 then give it legal force.
The Act gives ministers the power, under section 39, to set up negotiating bodies for social care. Section 42 defines who counts as a social care worker for this purpose. A sector legal guide puts the start date for both at 6 April 2026.
This is the awkward part of the design. Employers help negotiate a rate they will then be bound to pay, inside a budget they did not set. A provider's voice runs through the Care Provider Alliance. Its income still runs through the council contract.
So will care workers get a pay increase sooner? Not through this agreement. The first deal, backed by the £500 million, is due in 2028/29. Until then the legal floor for care pay stays the National Living Wage, set nationally.
What happens after 2028? Ministers will set the funding envelope each year, so the deal is built to return with a new budget attached. How big the first rate is, and whether it sits above the National Living Wage, has not yet been set out.
Council-employed and NHS-employed social care staff are excluded, because they are already covered by national bargaining. More consultation respondents backed including council staff than opposed it. The government left them out anyway.
ADASS and the LGA had themselves backed that exclusion, to avoid the risk of equal pay claims against councils, Community Care reported.
That line runs straight through the rota. Two people doing similar work can sit on opposite sides of it, depending on who employs them and how. A registered manager who uses a mix of employed staff, personal assistants and self-employed carers needs to know which is which before any rate is agreed.
The £500 million forms part of an increase of over £4 billion in total funding available for adult social care in 2028/29 compared with 2025/26, according to the department.
It is a funding envelope, not a published hourly rate or a percentage uplift. How far it stretches depends on what the negotiators agree and how many workers are in scope.
The Local Government Association is not convinced it will stretch far enough. It warned the funding was "not likely to be sufficient to cover the full cost" and wants assurance that all costs arising from the deal will be met centrally, the Local Government Chronicle reported (opens in a new tab).
That warning comes from the bodies that commission care. If councils are not sure the cost will be met, fee rates are where the doubt will show.
Providers know the pattern from the legal pay floor. The National Living Wage increased by 6.7% to £12.21 an hour in April 2025, and it has increased by more than half since 2019. Each increase is set nationally. The fee that pays for it is set locally.
National Living Wage, hourly rate (for workers aged 25 and over until March 2021, 23 and over until March 2024, 21 and over since) · April 2019 to April 2026
Note: The age the National Living Wage applies from fell over this period: 25 and over until March 2021, 23 and over until March 2024, then 21 and over.
Home care shows what happens when fees lag the law
The clearest warning is already on the books. Councils in England commission home care at rates that fall £2.3 billion short of the legal minimum cost of delivering it, including paying staff for all working time at minimum-wage levels, according to a Homecare Association report in October 2026 (opens in a new tab).
That figure is for home care only, not the whole sector. But it shows that national pay commitments do not reliably reach providers, even before any Fair Pay Agreement uplift is added. Our report on why no homecare contract studied met the Homecare Association's minimum price sets out the hourly prices behind it.
The fault sits between two decisions. A pay floor is set and funded at national level. The fee that has to carry it is set in each council's contract, and it does not always increase to match.
The agreement turns that funding risk into a legal one. Today a provider squeezed by fees can choose where to give. Once the rate has legal force, the pay line cannot move, so the squeeze lands on margins, hours or the decision to take council work at all.
Commissioners face the test at fee setting for 2028/29. A council that passes on the full cost gives providers a chance to meet the new rate. One that does not will be asking them to pay a legal rate at a fee that, in home care, was already short.
The negotiators start work on the rate in 2027. The question not yet answered is whether the fee for an hour of care in 2028/29 will increase by the same amount, and who makes up the difference if it does not.
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