Official statistics in development on adult social care activity including data on requests for support, provision of care services, and reviews of care and support plans.
Introduction
This report contains statistics aggregated from client level data (CLD) to provide information about adult social care activity in councils with adult social services responsibilities (CASSRs) in England for 2024 to 2025. CASSRs will be referred to as local authorities throughout this report.
Quarterly CLD statistics have been published by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) since March 2024 as part of the Monthly statistics for adult social care (England).
This activity report was previously published as the adult social care activity and finance report by NHS England. See the Adult social care finance report, England: 2024 to 2025 published by DHSC.
How the data can be used
This report may be of interest to members of the public, policy officials and other stakeholders to make local and national comparisons, and to monitor the quality and effectiveness of services.
You can use this data to:
- consider trends in long-term support. For example, where the number of episodes has increased or decreased for a particular type of social care provision, it is also important to consider trends in activity for the same type of care for a full understanding
- understand patterns of activity for requests, short-term care and reviews and characteristics of people requesting and drawing on care and support
- increase your understanding of the approaches to the commissioning and delivery of social care, by local authority
You can also use the data quality statement published alongside this commentary to support your understanding of local variation and national time trends – some of these may be due to differences in operational or reporting practices or methodological changes, not a change in activity. The change in data source to CLD represents a significant change from the short and long term (SALT) data that was previously published covering adult social care activity in local authorities in England.
You cannot:
- use this data to attempt to identify good or bad local authority performance
- directly compare activity data to finance data. This is not possible for various reasons. For example, long term care activity data includes those receiving long-term care with a primary support reason (PSR) of social care support, whereas this PSR is not included in long-term expenditure (instead being recorded as a combined short-term or long-term spend on the PSR). The activity statistics also do not take into account the intensity or length of care provided, which factors into expenditure on social care
Contact the DHSC Activity and Finance team at asc.statistics@dhsc.gov.uk if you:
- have any questions about the data published
- need any further information about how the data used in this report can be compared
Main points
All statistics in this report relate to the adult social care activity in England taking place during the year from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025. All references to years relate to financial years running from 1 April to 31 March.
Requests for support
Statistics on requests for support in this report should not be compared to previous SALT data due to changes in data source and methodology. There are known sources of over and underestimation of requests for social care in both CLD and SALT. The data quality statement can be used to support your understanding of this.
There were 2.02 million requests for support made by people new to social care. Of these requests:
- 1.30 million requests were from people aged 65 and over
- 665,000 requests were from people aged 18 to 64
A person new to social care is defined in this activity data as not having received long-term support over the previous 3 months.
Short-term support to maximise independence (ST-Max)
This data should not be compared to previous SALT data. This is due to differences in methodology and recording practices, and some local authorities have reported that their CLD submissions are incomplete and under-report their ST-Max activity. See the accompanying data quality statement on the Adult social care activity report, England: 2024 to 2025 page for more information.
There were 244,000 episodes of ST-Max for people new to social care. Of these episodes:
- 216,000 were for people aged 65 and over
- 27,000 were for people aged 18 to 64
A person new to social care means not having received long-term support over the previous 3 months.
Long-term support
Long-term support statistics can be directly compared to the SALT data published for previous years. However, please be aware that some comparisons may be impacted by changes to the data source and methodology. The data quality statement can be used to support your understanding of this.
Across all local authorities in England:
- 672,000 people were receiving long-term care on 31 March 2025, compared with 650,000 recorded on 31 March 2024
- 889,000 people received long-term care during the year, compared to 859,000 people recorded in 2023 to 2024
- 495,000 people had received long-term care for more than 12 months on 31 March 2025, compared with 480,000 people in the previous year
Reviews of long-term care and support plans
Review statistics should not be compared to previous SALT data. The data quality statement can be used to support your understanding of this.
Of the people who had received long-term support throughout the year, 293,000 received a review of their care and support plan. This represents 59% of people who had received long-term support throughout the year.
Accommodation status of long-term support recipients
Of the 889,000 people who received long-term care during the year:
- 590,000 (67% of people with a known accommodation status) were living at home or with family
- 288,000 (33% of people with a known accommodation status) people were not living at home or with family
This should not be compared to previous SALT data. See the accompanying data quality statement on the Adult social care activity report, England: 2024 to 2025 page for more information.
Employment status of long-term learning disability support recipients
There were 137,000 recipients of long-term learning disability support, who were aged 18 to 64 during the year. Of these people:
- 6,365 (6%) were in paid employment
- 106,000 (94%) were not in paid employment
This should not be compared to previous SALT data. See the accompanying data quality statement on the Adult social care activity report, England: 2024 to 2025 page for more information.
More details can be found on the Government website here.
