Yourcarehome.co.uk review the Laing & Buisson 2009 Care Home Market survey report

Market analysts Laing & Buisson have released their care home market survey report for 2008/9. The number of beds has risen from 467,400 in 1996 to 472,600. However demand remains unchanged at 419,000 places. The average care home has an occupancy rate of 89.8% meaning that the average care home is approximately 10% empty compared to 8% in 2005.

So, good news here for the consumer!! If you have the time and energy to shop around the complex care home maze you may be able to negotiate a bargain with many of the care homes who are experiencing lower occupancy levels.

However, this is only a temporary state of affairs for the care homes. Laing & Buisson predict that the number of occupied places will increase to 424,000 by 2014 and 459,000 by 2019.

In-fact, the number of "self funders" has risen from 31% in 2002 to 41% in 2009 which is good news for the care homes, and this figure is expected to keep on rising as the rate of home owner occupation among older people likely to enter care homes continues to grow.

So in spite of the current lower occupancy, the profitability of care homes remains fairly unchanged. In fact Laing & Buisson commented that reverberations of the global credit crisis continue to impact on the care home sector, but has not yet had an impact at an operational level.

Laing & Buisson referred to this period as "the calm before the storm" for the care home sector, with the planned downturn in public spending from 2011-12 onwards presenting a "real risk" of sub-inflationary increases in fees from councils. It said that this would hit care homes with a large proportion of state funding, though those which received a large degree of private funding (from "self funders") would fair better.

yourcarehome.co.uk an independent, online search facility which aims to provide the most comprehensive, accessible, up to the minute information on registered residential and nursing care homes in the UK.

So if you are looking for care homes, residential homes or nursing homes for the elderly in the UK visit www.yourcarehome.co.uk and shop around!

By Mark Sadler
Managing Director of www.yourcarehome.co.uk