Direct Payments Analysis 2024/25
The Government publishes data collated from local authorities on direct payments (DPs) annually. Below are some key observations from the data published for the 2024/25 year.
Year-on-year fall in DPs
The total number of DPs in England is 117,655. This is a decrease of 0.1% on 2023/24 (117,738), and some way below the peak of 129,975 in 2016/17 (shown in the pink blocks on the chart below).
Even more disappointingly, the proportion of people who access long-term support and who have a DP fell for the seventh year in succession. It is now 24.5% (2023/24: 25.5%), with the trend shown on the blue line on the graph above. This indicates that as more and more of the population receive social care support, they are NOT taking a DP.
Age groups
The number of DPs in the age 18-64 group did increase was increase year-on-year by 730 people, but was wiped out by a reduction in the age 65+ group of 820 people.
In terms of numbers of people receiving social care support generally, there is broadly a 50/50 split between the age 18-64 and the age 65+ group. However, a whopping 72% of all DPs are in the 18-64 group. The resulting gap in DP take-up rates is therefore significant: 36% amongst the 18-64 group but only 14% in the 65+ group.
Top (and bottom) of the table
NHS Digital publishes a dashboard that ranks local authorities according to their overall take-up level. This year, a take-up level of 41% gets you in the top 5 and a take-up rate of less than 12% gets you into the bottom 5.
There has been quite a lot of movement in the rankings this year. Digging into this reveals that a lot of local authorities have seen significant year-on-year movements in their number of DPs - 13 local authorities that recorded an increase of more than 100 DPs and 11 local authorities recorded a decrease of more than 100 DPs. The biggest increase was Rotherham (+572 DPs), and the biggest decrease was Kent (-731 DPs).
The reasons for these large swings are unclear. It is true that the data has been published in a different format this year, leading us to have some concerns about the validity of year-on-year analysis at the local authority level.
Smaller data set
The commentary that we have published in previous years included analysis of things like spend on DPs and the average cost of a DP. That data was obtained from the SALT returns, which have now sadly been discontinued, so our commentary is more limited this year.
Next steps
If you want to chat informally about any of the above or what the data says about your area, we'd be happy to hear from you.