Performance Tracker Local
Institute for Government (IFG); 2025.
Examining the care gap in England. The provision of adult social care by local authorities in England should, in theory, be based on an individual’s need and ability to fund their own care. But this is not what is happening in practice.
There exists a damaging geographical and demographic ‘care gap’ in England that means access to care for older adults is increasingly based not on need but on other factors – some perhaps less surprising, like local levels of deprivation and disability, but some more so, like the number of older people who live in an area.
That this nationwide variation is not new should not excuse the government from action. That it has grown and may well continue to grow as the over-65 population of England outpaces that of all other age groups makes that action more urgent.
But to act well government needs to better understand the problem and how and where this care gap is forming and is at its most extreme. This is what this report, the latest in our Performance Tracker Local series supported by the Nuffield Foundation, seeks to help it do.