Knight Frank’s Annual Assessment of operating performance in the UK Care Home sector. The market leading report includes analysis of occupancy, fees and profitability on a regional basis.

Findings include:

• Occupancy rates in UK care homes increased from 88.4% to 89.2%, to stand at the highest rate since 2006 driven by the national crisis in regards to the shortfall of care beds in the UK.

• Fees increased to record high, outstripping RPI inflation and increasing staff costs. Average weekly fees increased by 7.4% to stand at £746.

• With the introduction of the National Living Wage and the shortfall of qualified nurses in the UK, we witnessed a 7% increase in staff costs to £22,512 per resident. Fee inflation compensated for rising staff costs reducing staff costs as a percentage of income from 58.2% to 57.5%.

• Profitability margin fell from 27.5% to 25.2% driven by rising staff, food and property costs.