Official statistics on adult social care finance in councils with adult social services responsibilities, including information on expenditure and income sources across both long and short term care.
Introduction
This report presents data on adult social care finances in England for the period 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025. All references to years relate to those running 1 April to 31 March. It draws on data from the adult social care finance return (ASC-FR) submitted by each local authority. It provides information on how local authorities funded adult social care, how much they spent and where the money came from. Note, some figures in this report may not sum due to rounding.
This finance report was previously published as the Adult social care activity and finance report by NHS England. See the Adult social care activity report, England: 2024 to 2025 published by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
How the data can be used
This report may interest members of the public, policy officials and other stakeholders. It can be used to compare local and national data and to monitor the quality and effectiveness of services.
You can:
- use this report to consider similarities and differences in the trends shown in the data. For example, if expenditure has increased or decreased for a type of social care, check the related activity trends in the activity report to understand the full picture
- use this data to increase your understanding of how local authorities commission and deliver social care
- contact us if you have any questions about the data published – see the ‘Contact’ section below
- use the data quality outputs to help you understand variation and change at local level. Some changes may reflect operational practice, methodological changes, or how a local authority responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than a change in demand
You cannot:
- divide expenditure by activity data to work out a cost per person. For example, the client level data (CLD) used in the activity return does not distinguish between someone receiving one week of care and someone receiving long-term support for a full year
- use this data to judge performance as good or bad
- directly compare long-term activity data published alongside this publication with the long-term finance data published here. The 2 reports define long-term care differently. For example, activity data includes clients receiving long-term care with a primary support reason (PSR) of social support. In finance data, this PSR is not included in long-term expenditure but recorded as a combined short-term and long-term spend. Because of these definitional differences, you must not compare the 2 data sets directly.
Note on the impacts of COVID-19
There were no specific funding measures in place to address the residual impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in financial years 2023 to 2024 or 2024 to 2025. However, these were in place in previous years (2020 to 2021 and 2021 to 2022) so this should be borne in mind when looking at longer term trends.
Main points
The main points outlined in this report are that:
- gross current expenditure (GCE) on adult social care by local authorities was £29.4 billion in 2024 to 2025. This was £2.3 billion (9%) higher than the previous year in cash terms
- over three-quarters (80% or £23.6 billion) of total GCE was spent on long-term support in 2024 to 2025. This was £2.2 billion (10%) higher than in 2023 to 2024
- income from client contributions increased by 14% (£0.6 billion) between 2023 to 2024 and 2024 to 2025. It accounted for the highest share of local authority income, overtaking external income from the NHS (which increased by 4%). Overall income increased by 8% to £9.7 billion
- the average cost of a week of residential or nursing care increased by 7% (£77.15) to £1,185.55. The average cost of an hour of externally-provided home care was £23.56, an increase of 7% (£1.53) on last year
Read the full report here.
