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England · 2026/27 rates
Not a national average. The actual rates 12 councils have published for this financial year, each with its source and the date we checked it.
There are two prices for the same room. Councils publish between £768 and £1,182 a week for a standard residential place in 2026/27. A family paying for itself is almost always quoted more — the Competition and Markets Authority found self-funders pay around 40% more than councils for the same care.
Every figure below comes from a council’s own published rate card or committee paper. Where a council has not published one, we say so rather than estimating. How we source fees.
These are rates for placements the council arranges. They are the firm number to negotiate against — not what a home will quote you.
| Council | Residential | Dementia | Nursing, with FNC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bolton45 homes | £754 | £838 | — |
| Devon241 homes | £915–£1,182 | — | — |
| Essex285 homes | £770 | — | — |
| Hampshire334 homes | £990–£1,090 | — | — |
| Hertfordshire176 homes | £768 | £919 | £1,149 |
| Norfolk247 homes | £867 | £956 | £1,145 |
| Nottinghamshire205 homes | £776–£868 | — | — |
| Sandwell58 homes | £775 | — | £1,043 |
| Solihull38 homes | £800 | £909 | — |
| Somerset153 homes | £834 | £890 | £1,130 |
| Suffolk166 homes | £912 | — | — |
| West Sussex268 homes | £900 | £1,000 | £1,298 |
Where a cell is empty, the council has not published that figure separately. We do not fill gaps with estimates. Each council page carries the full rate card and a link to the source.
Comparison sites publish one number per council. Having read the actual rate cards, we can tell you that number often does not exist. Councils use four incompatible models:
North Yorkshire goes furthest: providers set their own price when they join the council’s Approved Provider List, and those contracts receive no annual uplift at all. There is no council rate to publish because none exists.
Nottinghamshire is worth knowing about for a different reason: its four bands are assigned by an annual quality audit of each home, not by the resident’s needs. If the council pays a home its top band, the council has judged that home to be better. Nobody else publishes that as a quality signal.
NHS-funded nursing care is £267.68 a week from 1 April 2026. The NHS pays it straight to the nursing home, on top of the social care element, and it is not means-tested.
The problem is that councils publish it differently. Sandwell shows its nursing rate as £775.11; the home actually receives £1,042.79. Norfolk prints both figures side by side. West Sussex says its rates are “net of FNC”. A council quoting the inclusive figure looks 35% more generous than one quoting the exclusive figure, while paying exactly the same.
Among the councils that publish a separate dementia rate, the premium runs from 7% to 20%: Somerset pays 6.7% more, Norfolk 10%, West Sussex 11%, Bolton 11%, Solihull 14%, Hertfordshire 20%. Nottinghamshire runs a separate “Dementia Quality Mark” payment worth roughly £66–£78 a week — though it is being phased out, with no new applications accepted after April 2026.
West Sussex is the clearest illustration of what dementia costs: its Band C for specialist dementia care is £1,000 a week, against £900 for Band P frailty. The care is more staff-intensive, and every council that separates the two prices it higher.
What that premium buys, and the six questions that separate a good dementia home from an expensive one: dementia care homes.
Where councils publish an hourly rate for care in your own home, 2026/27 figures run from £22.12 (Sandwell) to £28.00 (Hertfordshire), with Solihull at £25.84, Somerset at £26.92 and Nottinghamshire’s district medians between £25.94 and £27.83.
Note what that means over a week. Four one-hour visits a day at £28 is £784 a week — close to a residential place, without the accommodation. Home care is cheaper only up to a point, and that point arrives sooner than most families expect.
Price is only half of it. Before you judge a home on its rating, check when that rating was earned: how to read a CQC rating.
No. The £86,000 cap on lifetime care costs was due to start in October 2025 and was cancelled in 2024. Nothing has replaced it, and the commission now examining long-term reform is not expected to report in full before 2028.
Treat older guidance carefully: a good deal of what was written before 2025 assumes a cap that never arrived. See paying for care.
Six questions and the 2026/27 means test: the £23,250 threshold, tariff income, the 12-week property disregard and NHS-funded nursing care. It tells you what you would pay each week and what the council should cover.
Work out your contributionWe publish prices and register data. We are not an advice service, and for the decisions that follow these are the sources worth your time — all free, none of them selling you anything.
Every care home on the CQC register in the areas we cover, with its inspection rating, the date that rating was published, and the council rate for the area where we have it.
Reviewed 28 August 2026. Figures are for 2026/27 unless stated. This is information, not financial or legal advice.