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The five regions where care will cost more than the value of your home

Caring nurse holding kind elderly lady's hands in bed.
Caring nurse holding kind elderly lady's hands in bed.



If you need to pay for care in your old age, then there's a very real risk that you will end up having to sell your family home in order to cover the costs. But that's not the worst of it: new research has revealed that in five regions in the UK, you would have to use up the entire value of the family home, and a huge chunk of your savings, before the government stepped in to offer help.

The cap

For years people have been forced to sell their home in order to pay for care. The government announced that this horrible situation would be coming to an end, because they would cap the total cost of care at £72,000 - and once you had spent this money they would step in to pick up the rest of the cost.

However, new research has revealed that this is far from the whole picture.

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The problem

Experts at Partnership point out that when the government is calculating how much you pay for social care, they base their sums on the amount that the local authority would agree to pay - minus what they call 'hotel costs'. It means that while a typical private individual forks out £28,964 a year for care, the government only counts £12,000 of it towards the cap.

Based on the government's £12,000 figure, it would take 6.1 years to reach the cap and qualify for help from the state. Over this period of time families in the more expensive parts of the UK would have paid out £177,500 for care.

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Clegg: 'Society Will Pick Up' Care Costs Bill
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In five regions of the UK, this would erode the entire value of the typical home. In Yorkshire the situation is most severe - where people would have to pay 147% of the value of the property before hitting the cap. This is followed by the North West, where they'd need to spend 139% of the value of their home. In third place is the West Midlands at 133%, fourth is the North East at 126%, and fifth is the East Midlands at 122%.
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London is the least affected, because homeowners would typically only have to spend 40% of the value of the property before getting help. This is followed by the South East at 68%, the East of England at 87% and the South West at 88%.

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Overall, a typical person will spend 92% of the value of their home before getting help. However, the figures are massively distorted by London, disguising the thousands of people who would spend every penny, and erode thousands of pounds of their family's savings before qualifying for any help at all.

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