The Employment Rights Act promises greater security for workers. New rules on guaranteed hours and compensation when work is cancelled, moved or curtailed at short notice are intended to end one-sided flexibility, and homecare workers deserve that protection. But a collision is coming. Government is removing one-sided flexibility from employment while the state retains one-sided flexibility in the way it buys care.
The problem is structural. A provider cannot guarantee a care worker’s Tuesday if nobody has guaranteed the provider’s Tuesday. Yet many councils and NHS Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) buy homecare through frameworks that guarantee no volume and pay in arrears for contact time, sometimes by the minute. The unit in which the state buys care becomes the unit in which the provider earns, and too often the unit in which the worker is paid.
Current procurements show the collision in real time. Oldham’s 2026/27 tender adopts a promising neighbourhood structure, then prices daytime care at £25 per hour – £9.42 below our Minimum Price, and below even the £26.17 direct cost of employing a care worker at the National Living Wage – yet pays only for the minutes recorded. Its night-time service is block funded but priced 16% below the cost of delivery. Redcar and Cleveland is moving to exact-minute payment at rates as low as £23.04 per hour, reminding providers of their immigration duties while making their income less secure. Derbyshire’s proposed rates fund the shortest visits least generously, though they cost most to deliver. Each council requires capacity but declines to pay for it.
Homecare is not a shift-based workplace. A care worker completes a run of eight to 12 visits, with travel and waiting between them. One hospital admission or delayed discharge can reshuffle several workers’ rotas without anyone losing an hour – yet a payment attached to each moved visit would tax that good practice. Employers would carry the cost of guaranteed hours and short-notice changes, while commissioners could still reduce, move or end work without carrying the risk.
Nor is buying minutes good for people. Person-led care does not run to a stopwatch. When income follows the minutes a worker spends in someone’s home, every avoided visit, every reablement success, every problem resolved by a phone call or remote monitoring reduces payment. The more effective the support, the lower the income. We reward activity rather than outcomes and make prevention and innovation financially risky.
Imagine a different destination. Assessed need creates an individual entitlement that the person directs to a quality-assured provider of their choice. The provider receives dependable payment for assessed need and capacity, with flexibility over delivery and a modest adjustment for outcomes, experience, and quality. Need sets the budget; the person directs it; outcomes influence payment; the provider has room to innovate.
We cannot jump there overnight. Neighbourhood commissioning offers a practical bridge: compact areas, sufficient and predictable local volume, payment for whole rounds or planned capacity, and trusted assessment and shared data. It is not about replacing small providers with large ones, but about giving each provider location enough viable work to build stable teams, compact rounds and secure jobs.
We are putting commissioning-reform proposals to the Minister of State for Care. We can increase funding, improve employment rights, negotiate a Fair Pay Agreement and tighten immigration compliance, but none will achieve its purpose while public bodies buy homecare by the minute, across a fragmented market and often below the cost of lawful delivery. Government cannot legislate zero-hours working out of homecare while leaving zero-hours commissioning intact. What the state buys determines what the citizen receives. It is time to stop buying minutes.
Dr Jane Townson OBE is Chief Executive Officer at the Homecare Association. Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: @Homecare-Association