| Reference | FOI 2025/1229 |
|---|---|
| Description | Prices paid for homecare services |
| Date Requested | 13/05/2025 |
| Date Replied | 31/07/2025 |
| Category | Finance |
We ask you to provide the information described below, including the prices paid to independent and voluntary sector Homecare Providers for the provision of regulated Homecare services delivered to people aged 65 years and over in their own home during the seven-day Reference Period which includes Monday 14 April 2025.
Your attention is drawn to the definitions and interpretation described in sections 2 and 3.
The information requested is:
Questions (a)-(i) refer to Homecare services. Questions (j) and (k) refer to Direct Payments.
j. The 2025-26 rate per hour for a Direct Payment, expressed in pounds and pence per hour. If you have more than one Direct Payment rate per hour, please select the rate paid to a recipient to employ a personal assistant (PA). If you have more than one Direct Payment PA rate per hour, please provide all such rates.
k. The total number of adults in receipt of a Direct Payment as of: (I) 1 April 2024 and (II) 1 April 2025 (or dates as close to these as possible).
NHS Greater Manchester consists of the following 10 Greater Manchester Localities: Bolton, Bury, Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale, Manchester, Oldham, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, and Wigan (former Clinical Commissioning Groups), who currently all have their own processes/systems for recording their Continuing Healthcare (CHC) activity. As such, information is recorded by each locality to suit the systems and processes adopted in that locality, and not all information is available consistently across all localities.
Most notably, the Salford locality arranges its purchases of homecare under contract with the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust (NCA FT), and therefore NHS GM does not hold much of the requested information – the detail of this is instead held by the NCA FT, and may be requested from them directly under the Freedom of Information Act.
In respect of cases in the Wigan locality, in the majority of cases, care is procured through the Local Authority under joint working arrangements, covering various types of individualised care, including those relevant to your request. In these instances, the Council commissions the care and recharges NHS GM for the costs incurred. Limited data is provided by the Council, and therefore NHS GM does not hold sufficient data in respect of cases which are procured in this manner through the Council. Where NHS GM directly procures care for the Wigan locality, this information is included in the below. For information not held by NHS GM, this may be requested from Wigan Council under the Freedom of Information Act.
As a result, for the remainder of this response, the data provided comprises a maximum of 9 of the ten localities of NHS GM.
Where data is held in respect of fewer than 9 localities, it is not provided here as to do so would result in providing incomplete and therefore inaccurate data.
One example of where not all data requested is held is in respect of the hourly rates commissioned. Whilst the hourly rate is used to calculate a weekly package of care, the value of that package of care is recorded on the ICB’s systems, rather than the hours and hourly rate used in its calculation. The hourly rate, and number of hours commissioned to calculate the weekly cost is not held in a structured manner that would allow it to be extracted and reported in respect of a number of localities. To do so instead would involve examining and manually extracting information from each individual record, at which point the costs of complying with this Freedom of Information request would extend beyond the limits imposed by the Act.
a.- e.) As described above, information is not held in a consistent structured format to allow NHS GM to extract a complete data set of the hours commissioned and the hourly rates charged as part of homecare packages of care.
f. Your organisation’s total spend on Homecare services purchased from all Homecare Providers during the Reference Period.
The total spend on homecare services is £629,577
The above values represent the amount of care commissioned by NHS GM (excluding Salford locality) for the parameters stated in the question. This may differ from the amount of care ultimately delivered (and therefore purchased) for example, if providers did not fulfil all visits, or patients were admitted to hospital during that period.
g. The total number of Homecare Providers that delivered the total hours of Homecare purchased during the Reference Period (as specified in item (d), above).
The total number of homecare providers by locality are:
| Locality | |
| Bolton | 14 |
| Bury | 17 |
| HMR | 25 |
| Manchester | 21 |
| Oldham | 10 |
| Salford | Paid as part of the NCA community block contract. Please refer to response to question a. |
| Stockport | 28 |
| Tameside | 16 |
| Trafford | 14 |
| Wigan | 20 |
h. The total number of people aged 65 years and over that received Homecare services from Homecare Providers during the Reference Period
The total number of people aged 65 years and over that received Homecare services from Homecare Providers during the Reference Period was 582.
i. A brief description of the type of contracts you currently hold with Homecare Providers (i.e. whether they are block contracts, lead provider contracts, framework contracts, spot contracts, etc.).
The contracts held by the localities are currently based on CCG historical arrangements and relationships with their Local Authorities. However, NHS GM are in the process of agreeing standard GM service specifications for nursing and residential and domiciliary care. The organisation is currently reviewing the CHC individualised healthcare commissioning strategy and future arrangements, including how services are contracted.
The current contracting arrangements include:
j. The 2025-26 rate per hour for a Direct Payment, expressed in pounds and pence per hour. If you have more than one Direct Payment rate per hour, please select the rate paid to a recipient to employ a personal assistant (PA). If you have more than one Direct Payment PA rate per hour, please provide all such rates.
NHS GM is not able to respond to this question as the information requested is not held in a structured format. Direct Payments rates are agreed on a package-by-package basis, to meet the needs of the individual. At the point at which packages of care are established, these are then uplifted each year by inflation as necessary. As in the response to questions a) to e), once established, the hourly rates within packages are not held in a structured format within the various locality systems, meaning data cannot be extracted in the format requested.
k. The total number of adults in receipt of a Direct Payment as of: (I) 1 April 2024 and (II) 1 April 2025 (or dates as close to these as possible).
The total number of adults in receipt of a Direct Payment as of 1 April 2024 was 291. As at 1 April 2025 it was 277. Note, this information includes data in respect of the Salford locality.
