Guidance

Annex D: recommended functionality for the data collection tools

Updated 27 September 2024

Applies to England

Following an announcement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 29 July 2024, the planned adult social care charging reforms, which were inherited from the previous government, will not be taken forward in October 2025.

Recommended functionality for the data collection tool for care homes

Any data collection tool used by local authorities should collect enough data to populate all elements set out in Annex A, Section 3.

Any data collection tool used by local authorities will likely need to consider the following in order to support the completion of a robust, verifiable analysis of provider costs in a given local authority area.

• Contact details of the person completing it, so that clarification questions can be asked where required, as well as the name of the care home to which it relates, and its CQC location ID to help track responses and non responses.

• The care home’s total annual costs for each cost element in the most recent financial year (using the breakdown set out in Annex A, Section 3). The collection of total annual costs allows for potential verification of reported values against a care home’s accounts (for example, if discrepancies are identified), increasing rigour in the process.

• The care home’s average number of residents over the financial year for the following categories (the total average number of residents and total average number of nursing residents enable the calculations of cost per resident per week for many of the categories in Annex A, Section 3):
  • standard residential care
  • residential care for enhanced needs
  • standard nursing care
  • nursing care for enhanced needs
  • nursing care for NHS Continuing Health Care (NHS CHC)^{[footnote 1]}
  • from the above, total average residents and total average nursing residents
• Information about staffing, including carers and nursing staff. For each staff type^{[footnote 2]} both:

(i) staff wages per hour, on costs and cover costs^{[footnote 3]}

(ii) average total staff hours per week

This enables the calculation of average carer and nurse costs per hour, and average carer and nurse hours per resident per week^{[footnote 4]}. These should be consistent with the carer and nurse costs per resident per week implied by previous bullets and therefore the accounts.

• The data collection tool should be able to flex the results from the previous bullet (average carer cost per resident per week, and average nurse cost per nursing resident per week, including on costs and cover) for each of the service types listed below, for example by varying the number of carer and nurse hours per resident per week for each service type. The results across these different service types should remain consistent with previous bullets and therefore the accounts. To maintain simplicity the tool does not need to flex non-staffing costs (for example, food) by service type in the above way, though it should remain possible to compare those costs in care homes that offer nursing with costs in care homes that do not:
  • standard residential care
  • residential care for enhanced needs
  • standard nursing care
  • nursing care for enhanced needs
  • nursing care for NHS Continuing Health Care
• The data collection tool is expected to gather the care home’s freehold valuation to help inform analysis of the appropriate return on capital in the local authority.

Recommended functionality for the data collection tool for domiciliary care

Any data collection tool used by local authorities should collect enough data to populate cost elements set out in Annex A, Section 3.

Any data collection tool used by local authorities will likely need to consider the following in order to support the completion of a robust, verifiable analysis of provider costs in a given local authority area.

• Contact details of the person completing it, so that clarification questions can be asked where required, as well as the name of the home-care agency to which it relates, and its Care Quality Commission (CQC) location ID to help track responses and non responses.

• The data collection tool should collect data on different measures of volume as follows. This enables an accurate apportionment of fixed costs:
  • it should allow the user to specify different durations of time for the visit (for example, 30, 45 and 60 minutes) and collect the number of visits of each length and the total time spent on visits
  • it should collect the average number of service users per week
• The data collection tool should consider travel time. Collecting the following will allow the calculation of travel pay and average mileage per contact hour:
  • average travel distance in miles per visit
  • average travel time in minutes per visit
  • the amount of mileage paid per mile
• The data collection tool should consider staffing categories, hourly rates/salaries paid, and any enhancements for anti-social hours/overtime:
  • staffing categories may include carers, senior carers, registered nurses, supervisors, team leaders (non-care staff are included below)
  • direct staff hourly rates for each staffing category and salaries where appropriate
  • enhancements may include those for weekend or evening working, and bank holidays – where these are included, it will be helpful to note what proportion of time such visits make up, alongside a percentage breakdown of the call allocation between each staffing category

This enables the calculation of weighted average staff costs across different visit types.

• The data collection tool should allow for all relevant on-costs, such as holiday pay, sick pay, suspension pay, maternity/paternity pay, paid breaks, other non-contact pay, training and supervision days, employer’s National Insurance and employer pension contributions.

• The data collection tool should collect back-office pay costs for the registered manager, team leader/supervisor/deputy manager, care coordinators/scheduling, administration, and any other relevant back-office staff both in terms of FTEs and pounds per hour.

• The data collection tool should collect a full range of non-pay costs, which are listed in Annex A, Section 3. These costs will include a large variety of categories including insurance, IT, recruitment, marketing, CQC fees and many other categories.

1. Although the exercise may not report costs for this category, if apportioning staff hours in a care home between different client types, it is important to understand NHS CHC as this will affect the remaining hours for non-CHC service types. ↩

2. For example, care assistant, senior care assistant, agency care assistant, nurse, senior nurse, agency nurse. ↩

3. Such as holiday pay, sick pay, suspension pay, maternity/paternity pay, paid breaks, other non-contact pay, training and supervision days, employers National Insurance and employer pension contributions. Agency workers will not have on costs and cover costs as these are part of the agency payment. ↩

4. Carer costs and hours should be per residential/nursing resident, nurse costs and hours should be per nursing resident. ↩