The short version. An hour of homecare in England cannot be sold for less than £34.42 in 2026/27 and still pay the National Living Wage for every working minute, cover travel time and mileage, meet wage on-costs and leave anything for running a lawful business. That is the Homecare Association’s Minimum Price for Homecare, and it is the number this index is built on.
Councils and health trusts do not pay it. In 2025/26 their weighted average fee was £24.39 an hour against a minimum price of £32.14 that year, a shortfall of £7.75 an hour, or 24.1 per cent.
At £34.42, the higher rate of Attendance Allowance buys 3 hours 20 minutes of care a week. The lower rate buys 2 hours 14 minutes.
What a family is almost never handed is the hourly rate itself. The rota arrives, the price does not. We call that the care-hour blank.
What an hour of care costs
The Homecare Association builds its Minimum Price each year from the statutory wage floor upwards: pay for all working time including travel, waiting and training, then mileage, then wage-related on-costs, then a minimum contribution towards running the business. It is a floor, not an average. A provider charging below it is either absorbing a loss or not paying for something the law says it must pay for.
| Figure, England | 2025/26 | 2026/27 |
|---|---|---|
| National Living Wage, 21 and over | — | £12.71 |
| Minimum Price for Homecare, per hour | £32.14 | £34.42 |
| Weighted average fee paid by councils and health trusts | £24.39 | not yet published |
| Average NHS fee | £23.96 | not yet published |
| Shortfall against the minimum price, same year | £7.75 | not yet calculable |
The minimum price rose by £2.28 an hour between those two years, a little over 7 per cent. The 2026/27 fee rates councils actually pay have not been published, so the 2026/27 shortfall is not yet a number anyone can honestly state. The same-year gap of £7.75 is the one to quote.
What a pattern of visits costs in a year
Care is sold in visits, so the arithmetic that matters is the one that turns visits into a yearly figure. Every row below is the visit pattern multiplied by 365 days, multiplied by £34.42.
| Pattern | Hours a week | Hours a year | A year at £34.42 |
|---|---|---|---|
| One 30-minute visit a day | 3.5 | 182.5 | £6,281.65 |
| Two 30-minute visits a day | 7 | 365 | £12,563.30 |
| Three 30-minute visits a day | 10.5 | 547.5 | £18,844.95 |
| Four 30-minute visits a day | 14 | 730 | £25,126.60 |
| Four 45-minute visits a day | 21 | 1,095 | £37,689.90 |
Those are prices at the legal floor. A private agency quoting a family directly has no obligation to stop there, and the figures it quotes will usually be higher.
What each payment buys, in hours
Benefit rates for 2026/27 divided by £34.42. This is a conversion, not a recommendation: Attendance Allowance is not ring-fenced for care and can be spent on anything.
| Payment, 2026/27 | A week | Hours at £34.42 | In hours and minutes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attendance Allowance, higher rate | £114.60 | 3.33 | 3h 20m |
| Attendance Allowance, lower rate | £76.70 | 2.23 | 2h 14m |
| Carer’s Allowance | £86.45 | 2.51 | 2h 31m |
| Pension Credit, standard minimum guarantee, single | £238.00 | 6.91 | 6h 55m |
| Minimum income guarantee, single, pension age | £241.45 | 7.01 | 7h 1m |
| Personal expenses allowance in a care home, England | £31.80 | 0.92 | 55m |
Three things fall out of that table. Over a full year the higher rate of Attendance Allowance is worth £5,959.20, which is 173 hours of care. Set against one hour of care a day, it covers 47.4 per cent of the bill and leaves £6,604.10 to find from somewhere else.
The second is the gap between the two income floors. When a council charges for care at home in England it must leave a single person of pension age with £241.45 a week. The Pension Credit guarantee, the figure the state treats as the minimum income to live on, is £238.00. The difference is £3.45, which is six minutes of care.
The third is the personal expenses allowance. A care home resident in England keeps £31.80 a week for everything the home does not provide. That whole week of spending money is less than the minimum price of a single hour of care at home.
The four nations charge differently
Capital limits decide when a council stops paying. They are not the same anywhere in the UK, and Wales sets its limit at more than double England’s.
| Nation | Capital limits, care home | Weekly spending money kept | The rule that changes the sum |
|---|---|---|---|
| England | £23,250 upper, £14,250 lower | £31.80 | Care at home is charged, subject to a minimum income guarantee of £241.45 a week for a single person of pension age |
| Wales | £50,000 | £46.35 | Charges for care that is not in a care home are capped at £100 a week |
| Scotland | £36,750 upper, £22,750 lower | £37.65 | Personal care is paid at £260.30 a week and nursing care at £117.10, flat rate and not means-tested |
| Northern Ireland | £23,250 upper, £14,250 lower | £34.10 | A savings credit of up to £5.75 a week for residents over 65 |
The Scottish payments are flat contributions towards a care home bill, not an hourly rate, so they are shown here as they are paid rather than converted into hours. Between the lower and upper limits every nation applies a tariff: in Scotland, £1 a week of assumed income for every £250 of capital above £22,750.
The care-hour blank
A care package is described in visits. Four a day, thirty minutes each, two carers in the morning. The price of an hour sits in a contract between the council and the provider, or in an agency’s rate card that arrives after the decision has been made. When the hours are on the letter and the hourly rate is not, that is the care-hour blank, and it is the single number that turns a rota into a budget.
It matters because the two ends of the arrangement move independently. A personal budget is set in pounds. The price of an hour rises every April with the wage floor. A budget that is not increased by the same percentage buys fewer hours than it did the year before, and nobody has to announce that for it to happen.
Questions that fill the blank
- What is the hourly rate being paid for this package, and is it the council’s commissioned rate or an agency’s private rate?
- How many hours a week does the personal budget buy at that rate?
- Is travel time between visits paid for out of the same rate, and is it counted inside the visit or on top of it?
- What happens to the number of hours when the rate rises in April?
- If a second carer is needed for a transfer, is that hour charged once or twice?
- What is the charge for a visit that is missed, shortened, or cancelled late?
Method. The hourly figure is the Homecare Association’s Minimum Price for Homecare for England, £34.42 for 2026/27 and £32.14 for 2025/26, taken from the association’s own response to the Low Pay Commission, read on 27 September 2026. Fee rates paid by public bodies are the association’s published analysis for 2025/26. Benefit rates are the Department for Work and Pensions figures for 2026 to 2027. Charging thresholds are each nation’s own published figures. Hours are the weekly amount divided by £34.42, rounded to two decimal places, with minutes rounded to the nearest whole minute. Annual costs are the daily hours multiplied by 365, multiplied by £34.42, rounded to the nearest penny.
What this index does not do. It does not price any named agency, and it is not a quote. It does not claim that any provider charges the minimum price, only that a price below it cannot cover the legal costs the association sets out. Attendance Allowance is not a care budget and carries no condition to spend it on care; converting it into hours shows scale, not entitlement. Nothing here is legal or financial advice.
Next revision. Rebuilt when the April 2027 benefit rates and charging thresholds are published, and again when the Homecare Association publishes its Minimum Price for 2027/28, normally in December. The 2026/27 fee rates paid by councils are added when that analysis appears.
Cite this. Look Into, UK Care Hours Index, 27 September 2026. https://lookinto.co.uk/care/uk-care-hours-index/
Sources
- Homecare Association, response to the Low Pay Commission 2026, giving the Minimum Price for Homecare in England of £34.42 for 2026/27 and £32.14 for 2025/26, and the April 2026 National Living Wage of £12.71. homecareassociation.org.uk
- Homecare Association, Fee Rates for State-Funded Homecare in 2025-26, giving the £24.39 weighted average and the £23.96 NHS average. homecareassociation.org.uk
- Department for Work and Pensions, Benefit and pension rates 2026 to 2027. gov.uk
- GOV.UK, Attendance Allowance: what you’ll get. gov.uk
- Department of Health and Social Care, Social care charging for care and support 2026 to 2027, local authority circular. gov.uk
- Welsh Government, Charging for social care. gov.wales
- Care Information Scotland, Capital limits. careinfoscotland.scot
- Care Information Scotland, Personal and nursing care in care homes. careinfoscotland.scot
- Care Information Scotland, Personal expenses allowance and savings disregard. careinfoscotland.scot
- nidirect, Paying your residential care or nursing home fees. nidirect.gov.uk