2017 CARE HOMES TRADING PERFORMANCE REVIEW

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.