Between 2017/18 and 2023/24, 41,000 older people exhausted all their savings paying for social care, new research finds.

As MPs return to Parliament after the summer break, Age UK is urging them to back social care reform, spearheaded by Baroness Louise Casey's independent commission.

Andy Burnham first proposed reforming social care in 2009. Seventeen years on, Age UK says care support has declined sharply even as demand has soared from an ageing and growing disabled population.

Age UK says the figures speak for themselves and is calling on politicians of all parties to finally deliver fundamental reform.

The scale of the problem

• Since 2014/15, more than seven million requests from older people to a council for social care have resulted in no services provided.

• Over the same period, almost 250,000 older people have died waiting for care that never arrived in time.

• Since 2009, the population aged 65 and over has grown by 34%, from 8.4 million to 11 million.

• The savings threshold for state-funded care has not kept pace with inflation: it would be £37,293 today if it had, but remains frozen at £23,250, shutting more people out of help.

• In July 2026, an average of 14,000 hospital patients were medically fit for discharge but unable to leave, up from 3,500 in August 2010.

Comment

Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK, said: ‘We urge all political parties to seize the moment, resist playing party politics, and work towards bringing about much needed once in a generation reform.

‘There is lots to learn from other similar countries who are ahead of us in modernising their systems, and every reason to believe we can create something better than we have today.

‘What’s been most lacking is top level political support, but now we have a Prime Minister who understands the value of social care we have a fantastic opportunity to bring our outmoded system up to date.’

Further reading

Beyond the Language of Crisis: Fixing social care's workforce problem