Self funding care homes: where do councils fund the fewest beds?

Across England, councils fund about 42% of care home beds, measured as the people they fund in a care home in an average week set against the beds in their area. The lowest share is in Rutland, at 28%, followed by Windsor and Maidenhead (29%) and Cheshire East (32%). Kent funds about 35%, the 19th lowest of 143 councils we can measure.

Where the council funds few beds, most residents pay for themselves. A self funding care home market tends to support higher fees, and carries a particular risk: residents whose savings run out and move onto council funding, often at a lower price.

Who pays for care homes, and how we measure it

Care home places are paid for in three main ways: by the council, by the NHS, or by residents and their families. Each council reports how many people it funds in residential and nursing homes in an average week. We divide that by the number of care home beds CQC lists in the council area. Across the 143 councils included there are 192,761 council funded residents and 454,888 beds. The beds that are left over are filled by self funders, by people funded wholly by the NHS, or are empty.

The measure has a known weakness. Councils can place people in homes outside their own boundary. Where a council has few homes and places many people elsewhere, its funded residents can exceed its beds. In all, 9 councils come out above 100%: 8 London boroughs (Hackney, Haringey, Westminster, Southwark, Camden, Tower Hamlets, Islington, Hammersmith and Fulham) and Halton. We leave them out of the rankings and the England figure. City of London is not in the finance return.

Where are self funding care home markets strongest?

Of the fifteen councils that fund the smallest share of their beds, the South East supplies 6, more than any other region. Surrey, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Hertfordshire, East Sussex and West Sussex all fund about a third of their beds or less. The list also has some less obvious names: North East Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Bradford sit alongside the Home Counties.

A low share may reflect wealth, a council that places fewer people in care homes, or more beds than local residents need. The data shows the share, not which of these is at work.

Where councils fund most of the beds

At the top of the range, councils fund 67% or more of local beds. 8 of the fifteen are London boroughs, and 3 are in the North West, North East or Yorkshire. These are the areas closest to a market of council funded care homes. A home here lives or dies on the council rate, because there are few self funders to cross subsidise it. Isles of Scilly is on the list with just 26 beds, so treat its figure with care.

The regional picture

By region, the South East funds the smallest share of its beds, 36% across 19 councils, followed by the East of England (38%). London funds the most, 55%, even after excluding the 8 boroughs above 100%. The North East is next at 52%. The spread between the South East and London is 19 percentage points.

Do self funder councils pay more?

You might expect councils that fund few beds to pay more for them, because they compete with self funders for the same rooms. The data does not show that. Across 142 councils, the link between the funded share and the council residential rate is weak (a correlation of 0.12, where 0 means no relationship and 1 a perfect one). Outside London it is -0.21, slightly the other way.

Split the councils into five equal groups by funded share. The fifth that fund the least (28% to 36%) pay a median residential rate of £944 a week. The fifth that fund the most (56% to 96%) pay £1,063, but 14 of those 29 are London boroughs, which pay high rates for other reasons. The middle three groups pay £980, £888 and £897. Rises on 2024/25 were similar in every group, between 4.3% and 6.0% at the median.

Of the fifteen lowest funded councils, 10 pay less than the England median residential rate of £961.68. So a self funder market does not guarantee a generous council rate, and the gap between self funder and council fees can be wide when one becomes the other.

Kent and its neighbours

Kent funds 5,158 people in care homes in an average week against 14,824 CQC beds, a share of 34.8%. About 74% of those funded residents are aged 65 or over. Surrey, East Sussex, West Sussex and Essex fund similar shares, between 32% and 36%. Medway is the exception at 51%, much closer to a council funded market, even though it sits inside Kent's borders.

What sets Kent apart is price. Its average residential rate of £1,186.81 a week is the 19th highest of 152 councils, and it rose 11.6% in a year. Its neighbours pay between £849.45 and £1,033.31. A buyer looking at a home on the Kent and Medway boundary is looking at two very different council customers a few miles apart.

What a self funder market means for fees

A home in a self funder market sets its own price for most of its residents, which usually means a higher average fee than the council rate and less exposure to the council's annual uplift. It also competes on what families can see: rooms, food, activities, reviews and its CQC rating.

The council still matters. It is the buyer of last resort for residents whose money runs out, and its rate sets the floor that a resident's fee can fall to. In Kent's contract, when a self funder's money runs out the price temporarily reverts to the home's own ceiling price on the council framework, and the council may negotiate it down and reserves the right to move the resident. Other councils have their own rules.

Self funding a care home: what happens when the money runs out?

When a self funder's money runs out, the council steps in. Once capital falls to £23,250, the resident or their family can ask the council for a needs assessment and a financial assessment, and the council then pays towards the fees. It is worth contacting the council before savings reach that point, because assessments take time. What happens to the fee depends on the council's contract with the home and on whether a family member agrees to top up the difference.

In England a person with more than £23,250 in capital pays the full cost of a care home. Below that, the council carries out a financial assessment. Between £14,250 and £23,250 the council counts £1 a week of income for every £250 of capital, up to £36 a week; below £14,250 only income counts. These limits are unchanged for 2026/27. The value of a person's home usually counts once they move permanently into a care home, unless a partner or certain relatives still live there. The council must ignore the home's value for the first 12 weeks, and a deferred payment agreement can let the fee be paid from the house later.

Savings above the limit go quickly at care home prices. At Kent's average council residential rate, every £10,000 above £23,250 pays for about 8.4 weeks of care, before any pension or other income. Self funders pay more than the council rate, so their savings last even less time. A home full of self funders today will, over a few years, have some residents moving onto council funding. The question for a buyer is how many, how soon and at what price.

How we worked this out

We took the number of people each council funds in residential and nursing care in an average week from the Adult Social Care Activity and Finance Report for 2024/25, published by NHS England. That figure covers all ages. We divided it by the number of care home beds in the council area on the CQC register at 1 October 2026, counting homes registered under two providers once. We excluded the 9 councils whose result was above 100%. The England figure is total funded residents divided by total beds across the 143 councils that remain, which weights large councils more than a simple average would. Council fee rates are the 2025/26 rates councils reported to DHSC for the Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund. The capital limits are from the DHSC local authority circular on charging for 2026/27 and the Care and support statutory guidance on gov.uk.