Hospices in England to get £100m boost to help with cost pressures
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Government announcement comes as hospices struggle with higher wage bills and national insurance increase. Hospices in England are to receive a £100m-plus boost to funding amid worries that some end-of-life services could close because of the impact of the national insurance increase and wage rises.
The investment, announced in the Commons by the health minister Karin Smyth, was billed as “the biggest investment into hospices and end-of-life care in a generation”. “This government recognises the range of cost pressures the hospice sector has been facing over a number of years,” she told MPs.
The funding, coming in two chunks covering this year to 2026, includes an extra £100m for adult and children’s hospices, for this year and next. An additional £26m in support over 2025/26 will go to children and young people’s hospices. As well as helping with day-to-day spending, the money is intended to allow hospices, most of which are run as charities but which also receive government funding for their NHS-related work, to undertake refurbishment work, and to improve IT systems.
The most pressing financial crunch for the sector was the rise in employers’ national insurance unveiled in the budget, which hospice organisations believed could cost a combined £30m a year. Hospices were already struggling with higher wage bills to match the 5.5% pay rise given to public medical workers, with the sector overall estimating an additional shortfall of about £60m.
