More bad news for our ageing population

The headlines in The Telegraph last week surmise that even more elderly people will have to sell their homes to fund care home fees since a quiet unannounced funding cut is about to come into play.

The government is effectively reducing the level of savings that can be disregarded when looking at the care home fee means test by simply freezing the level at its current rate for the next two years.

They have no plans to review these limits until the autumn of 2012.

Inevitably, in the interim, this means more people will be dragged over the means test threshold and therefore having to self fund from whatever means they have.

Currently an individual owning reckonable assets above the £23,250 upper threshold (in England) will be forced to self fund until their assets fall below this level.

Traditionally this threshold has been increased annually to take into account inflation but the government has decided to hold ditch this approach as part of their austerity measures.

The real effect of this action is an effective cut to the threshold by up to 10%.

Around 100,000 people already receiving some form of care fund themselves and it is estimated that 20,000 sell their homes in order to do so. In view of this additional “cut” it is likely that even more will need to sell up in the future.