The BUILD Elder Care Charter

The Old Person Is the One the System Answers To
Working Draft — September 2026

The big idea

The old person is the one the system answers to. Not the home, not the council, not the provider.

Money follows the person, four sets of eyes stay on them, and families get treated as the care workforce they already are. One standard of care for everyone, whether they owned a house or not.

Pillar 1: Care at home, backed properly

Families who take in a relative get paid and supported, funded by a ring-fenced care account in the relative’s name.

For the family

25% council tax discount when a relative moves in: the single person discount in reverse
Carer’s Allowance raised from about £87 to £125 a week, for every carer. No earnings limit, no means test: work alongside it, and it’s extra on top of household income. Ignored for Universal Credit. Still requires 35+ hours of care a week: care-tested, not means-tested
A paid carer role on top, funded from the care account, so the care isn’t unpaid labour moved into a spare room
Solar and battery fitted if the home doesn’t already have them, plus a heat pump, to cover the extra energy of someone home all day

The care account

The relative’s home is sold or let, the family’s choice. Rent goes into the account; a sale lump sum goes in whole
Held in NS&I or gilts: government-backed, safe from council debts and market crashes
Run by a licensed provider (solicitor, credit union or building society), chosen by the family and switchable
The provider is paid from a capped slice of the interest, with a small floor fee if rates collapse. Not from the family’s pocket
If the home is let, the provider appoints a letting agent, costs paid from the rent

Spending rules

Everyday items: prepaid card locked to care categories
Big planned items (stairlift, wet room, respite): pre-approved, receipt follows
Emergencies: pay and claim back with receipts, within a time limit

Disability aids should be VAT zero-rated; the account makes sure families actually get that relief.

When home care isn’t enough

A needs assessment (social worker or GP) triggers the move, not a 3am crisis
Day centres, respite and night sitters first, to keep people home longer
If a care home is needed, the pot follows the person. Reaching your limit is not failure
The pot pays the home monthly, never upfront. The balance keeps earning for the resident, and stays safe if a home goes bust
On death, what’s left returns to the estate as normal

Same eyes as a care home

A home suitability check before the move: space, safety, adaptations needed
The same unannounced six-month checks as a care home, with a private chat with the relative
A short monthly check-in in place of weekly reports: families aren’t businesses and shouldn’t drown in forms
A volunteer visitor if the relative wants one, same as in a care home
Good families have nothing to fear; it protects the relative and the family alike

Eligibility: anyone willing to take someone in, family or not, subject to the checks above. The person cared for is a single person, or a couple moving in together, usually after a surviving partner is left alone. Non-relatives are DBS-checked, the person must consent, and an independent advocate is involved where they lack capacity.

Why it saves money

Meals on wheels: not needed
Private agency home care visits: largely not needed
District nurses: still needed, but less often
NHS: fewer falls, fewer emergency admissions, faster hospital discharge when there’s a home to go to

Pillar 2: Care homes that deserve the name

Proper pay, proper food, a reason to get up in the morning, and buildings fit for hotter summers.

Staff

Care staff on £15/hr, a real rise on today’s rates, which sit just above minimum wage
Realistic staffing: 5 carers on days and 3 on nights for 30 residents, plus cook, kitchen, housekeeping, activities, admin and maintenance

Food

Hearty, familiar meals with protein every meal. In care homes, weight loss is the bigger danger than overeating
Veg with every dinner, puddings daily, afternoon tea and cake, a milky drink at supper
Fruit and drinks available any time
A second option every meal, soft or minced versions for dentures and swallowing difficulties
Residents vote on the menu
Budget of £10 per resident per day; the draft menu comes in around £5–7, leaving room for choice

Activities

An activities coordinator, chair exercise or Zumba twice a week, two outings a month, entertainers, crafts and music
About £10 per resident per week

The home bakery

Sourdough sold to the public at £2 a loaf, the same as the big supermarkets, so local bakers aren’t undercut
The cook is already on shift and the dough works overnight, so the real extra cost is about 55p a loaf
Residents help bake: an activity with purpose
Profits (about £21,000 a year at 40 loaves a day) go straight to the activities fund

Energy and comfort

Solar, battery storage and a heat pump. Sand batteries as a future pilot
Air conditioning as a legal minimum standard, powered by the solar when the sun is strongest
Surplus power exported to the grid

Connected residents

Proper Wi-Fi in every room as a legal requirement
Every resident offered their own tablet or laptop, refurbished where possible
Ongoing teaching (email, video calls, YouTube), scam awareness included
Their device, their privacy: the home doesn’t monitor it or hold passwords
A resident with a device can raise the alarm themselves

Ownership

State-run, or family firms run not-for-profit at cost. Owners draw a fair salary and every surplus goes back into the home. No private equity, no offshore owners, no shareholder dividends. This keeps the good small independents, which tend to rate best.

Pillar 3: Four sets of eyes

The CQC inspects the building. These checks are on the person, weekly reports and unannounced checks, so nobody slips through.

1. Weekly reports

A short digital form per resident, same fields every week, sent to whoever the resident (or their attorney) chooses: weight, eating and drinking, mood and sleep, medication changes, falls or incidents, visitors and activities, anything the family should know.

2. Unannounced six-month checks

By an independent professional, not employed by the home, the account provider or the paying council
A private chat with the resident, without staff present
Weekly reports checked against reality
Findings go to the family, the provider and the CQC
Family can join if the resident wishes. It’s the resident’s call first
Paid from the pot for self-funders, by the state for everyone else

3. Volunteer visitor service

A bureau of DBS-checked volunteers, each spending 20 minutes a week with a resident
Three hours a week covers about nine residents. A hundred volunteers is roughly 900 residents seen every week
Same volunteer, same resident, so trust builds
Legal right of access: a home can’t bar a volunteer for being awkward
Volunteers flag concerns, triggering an early professional check. They don’t investigate, and they’re protected when they speak up
Safeguarding training on the warning signs
Visitors can help residents with their devices, and keep in touch through a scheme-run channel, never personal contacts
Builds on existing models: Independent Visitors for children in care, Independent Monitoring Boards in prisons, Healthwatch Enter and View

Volunteer expenses

Car: the HMRC mileage rate, index-linked annually. It’s been frozen at 45p since 2011 while diesel nears £2 a litre
Bus or train: full actual fare
Bike: the HMRC bicycle rate
Taxi where there’s genuinely no other way
Coffee and cake, shared with the resident, receipted and capped. Checked against the resident’s care plan first

4. CQC

Still oversees the whole home, now with far better information feeding in.

People with no house to sell

Everyone gets a care account on the same rails. Homeowners fund theirs from the house; renters and council tenants have theirs funded by the state. Same food, same checks, same visitors, same devices. No two-tier care.

Care homes

The state funds the care account, paid monthly to the home exactly like a self-funder’s
Everyone pays the true cost. Today self-funders pay around 40% more than councils for the same care in the same home (Competition and Markets Authority, 2017), and in a large 2017 sample across England they paid more in 96% of cases. In 2017 a Kent care alliance told MPs the council had advised its members to make their profits from privately funded residents. This model ends that
Their own income (state pension, any private pension) goes toward costs as now, with a personal allowance they keep

The family route

A family taking in a relative with no property gets a state-funded Home Care Contribution into the relative’s account
Set at £200 a week, on top of the £125 Carer’s Allowance: £325 a week in total, against about £803 for a care home place. It covers equipment, respite and supplies; the relative’s own pension covers their keep
The state saves about £478 a week per person, roughly £25 million a year for every thousand people cared for at home
Same council tax break, same spending rules, same checks

The housing dividend

A council tenant moving in with family frees a social home for someone on the waiting list
A private renter moving in stops drawing housing support
Those savings help fund the Home Care Contribution

The pitch: it’s not a perk for homeowners. The house only decides where the money comes from, never the standard of care.

The Care Pot: £10 a month for everyone

Every worker is auto-enrolled into a Care Pot in their own name, £10 a month, and can opt out any time, like a workplace pension. Invested by default in a low-cost index fund, run like NEST. Returns aren’t guaranteed; the table assumes 4% a year. It’s not money handed to the government: it stays yours.

Years paying in	Paid in	Pot at 4%
40	£4,800	~£11,800
45	£5,400	~£15,100

That’s about 11 months of home care at £325 a week, or 4¼ months of a care home place.

Tax-free, and ignored for every benefit calculation
Open to everyone, not just new workers, so older workers can still build something
Employer match (£10 each, like pension auto-enrolment) and a state top-up for low earners
Family can top it up tax-free
Never needed care? It goes to your estate
Renters have the Care Pot; homeowners have the Care Pot and the house

The numbers

A 30-bed home runs at about £803 per resident per week, or about £893 once the building is included. At real-world occupancy that’s nearer £1,000. Private homes charge £1,200–1,400+ now. That’s under £6 an hour for round-the-clock care, food and a home.

The average care home for older people in England has about 31–33 beds, and sector occupancy is around 89% (CQC data via Care Homes Finance; ONS).

Annual running costs, 30-bed residential home

Item	£ per year
Staff, incl. NI, pension, holiday cover	994,000
Food (£10/day)	109,500
Other overheads (insurance, repairs, supplies, IT, training, regulator)	125,000
Energy (with solar, battery, heat pump)	30,000
Activities	15,600
Bread income	–21,000
Grid export	–1,500
Net	~1,252,000

Staff are nearly 80% of costs. Energy, overheads and export are rough estimates. Property: the average care home bed is valued at about £61,000 (£30,000 for old stock, up to £150,000 for new builds). At the 6% return on capital councils use in fair cost of care exercises, that’s about £70 a week per bed, plus about £20 a week for furniture and equipment wear. A state-owned home borrowing at government rates would pay less.

How long a £250,000 pot lasts at £803 a week

Scenario	Pot lasts
Lump sum, no interest	~6 years
Paid monthly, balance earning 4%	~7 years
Paid monthly, 4%, plus state pension toward fees	~10 years

The average care home stay is a couple of years, so in most cases the care is fully paid and the estate gets a good chunk back.

Savings levers: cluster 3–4 small homes under one manager, admin and maintenance team (maybe £40–60 a week per resident), and bulk buy food and supplies across a cluster.

Funding

It pays for itself by redirecting money already spent on care that isn’t working: the money follows the person.

When someone moves in with a carer, the council home care budget already spent on them (the rushed short visits) moves into their Home Care Contribution
When someone leaves or avoids a care home, the care home fee the council was paying is saved
NHS savings: fewer blocked hospital beds, falls, ambulance call-outs and emergency admissions, plus fewer district nurse visits
Meals on wheels and agency home care no longer needed for those cared for at home
NHS and council money pooled into one care budget, building on the existing Better Care Fund
Central government guarantees the pooled budget and refunds councils the council tax discount in full; councils deliver locally

Unclaimed estates: when someone dies with no will and no heirs, their estate currently goes to the Crown as bona vacantia (and in Lancashire and Cornwall, to the Duchies). Under the charter it goes to the central care fund instead, starting with leftover care accounts and Care Pots. Anyone can also leave a gift to the fund in their will, tax-free like a charity legacy.

The £15 wage pays for itself: homes currently pay agencies £20+ an hour for staff who often take home little more than minimum wage. A directly employed carer on £15 costs about £18.75 an hour with NI, pension and holiday. Pay properly, keep staff, and the agency bill disappears.

The Carer’s Allowance rise: from about £87 to £125 a week costs about £2,000 per carer per year (£38.55 a week × 52), recovered through fewer emergency admissions, ambulance call-outs and agency visits. It goes to every carer, including those already caring today, not only families who take someone in under this charter. For carers already caring, the rise buys no new saving: it recognises care that is already happening, and it is part of the start-up cost below.

The start-up gap: savings arrive once people switch, but some costs come first. The Carer’s Allowance rise and the solar, battery and AC kit need upfront money, treated as invest-to-save: the kit pays back on bills, and the rest is recovered as savings build.

Sources

BUILD UK — Elder Care Charter — Working Draft — 2026

builduk.club/policy

Download this charter as a document (.docx) — the paper as written. What follows is the same text, readable.

Back to the charters →