The impact of the living wage on our care homes

As the living wage comes into force care home owners will be faced with a huge challenge in how they manage the direct impact to which this will have on their business and profit and loss accounts.

Wages are one of the largest expenses for a Care home and with councils being forced to manage with less money from the government there will be a knock on effect over the next period of time.

I envisage 3 things changing:

  1. Care homes will be forced to look at ways to down size and maybe that will not be a bad option to consider to more boutique homes for the aging population. Its the advice I would be giving my client and sooner rather than later to get ahead of the curve.
  2. People will consider living together entering old age in one property  with a live in carer. All individuals responsible for jobs around the house which would help those avoid isolation and with a carer on side for as and when needed.
  3. and….more and more of the baby boomer generation will start to consider  having mum or dad live with them. There will be a cost to this both emotionally and financially.

If you choose to all live together and sell your main homes there is no Capital Gains Tax on the sale of your own home.

If you have mum or dad live with you there will be some considerations for you all to make especially making sure your home is safe especially if in later life they are diagnosed with dementia!

Think about that and the consequences involved