On Thursday 28 November 2024, the ITV documentary Keeping Care Alive: Hospices aired. Not only outlining the amazing care we provide to people in our local communities, it also drew attention to the mounting difficulties that Hospices across the UK are currently facing.

The story so far…

The UK’s charitable hospices support 300,000 dying people and 60,000 of their loved ones every year. This need is only set to increase, with an ageing population who will be living with multiple conditions in the coming years.

Hospices deliver many essential services on behalf of the NHS, and should be a key part of Government’s plans to fix the NHS and move more care into the community. Hospices prevent people dying in hospital, by ensuring they get the care they need, in a place of their choice.

Government funding rarely reflects the cost of services, meaning hospices have had to make up the shortfall through fundraising and charity shop income.

However, over the last few years, the cost of delivering hospice care has increased significantly. Government funding has not kept up, and the sector is now facing a financial crisis – worse than anything it has seen for 20 years.

A worsening situation

This crisis existed before Government’s recent budget, but the National Insurance announcement in the Budget has worsened the situation.

For most Hospices, staff is one of the biggest costs, and here at Nottinghamshire Hospice, salaries make up 86% of our expenditure. The Budget announcement means we will need to find an extra £190,000 next year to cover our increased staff costs.

This is without trying to compete with any form of NHS pay increases.

Urgent action is needed

The Secretary of Health and Care has recently promised more support will be on its way before Christmas. We, alongside many of our friends and colleagues in other Hospices, welcome this announcement, but are waiting in anticipation of what this will look like – and if it goes far enough.

It is vital that this support does more than offsetting the cost of Employer National Insurance contributions, and includes a commitment to building a sustainable hospice funding model for the future.

Only the beginning

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