Social care
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Labour market

Care to negotiate?

Making a success of the Adult Social Care Negotiating Body

Charlie McCurdy
Charlie McCurdy
Melanie Simms
Melanie Simms
Hannah Slaughter
Hannah Slaughter

This briefing note sets out recommendations to ensure the new Adult Social Care Negotiating Body can get off the ground quickly, while leaving scope to iterate and refine over time, so that it can deliver lasting improvements to the pay and conditions of England’s 1.5 million social care workers.

Adult social care is a vital public service, yet this is not reflected in the pay and job conditions on offer to England’s 1.5 million social care workers. Workers often face low pay, insecure work and breaches of labour market rules, and these issues have contributed to a long-standing recruitment and retention crisis. So, it is welcome that the Government is creating the Adult Social Care Negotiating Body (ASCNB) in 2026, which will bring together workers and employers to draw up a Fair Pay Agreement (FPA) aimed at improving wages and conditions.

The Government faces key decisions about how the ASCNB should be set up – including who should participate in negotiations, which terms and conditions should be covered, and how the agreement should be enforced. But although these policy details matter, they should not stand in the way of getting to the negotiating table. Part of the success of the Low Pay Commission – the UK’s last major institutional innovation in the UK labour market almost 30 years ago – was that it started small and moved quickly. In contrast, New Zealand’s recent attempt to establish fair pay agreements was slow to get off the ground and was ultimately overturned. Speed and simplicity will be of the essence if the ASCNB is to stand the test of time, shift the dial on precarity and poor-quality work in adult social care, and serve as a model for other sectors with acute labour market problems.

Key findings

  • Union representation in adult social care is below average: 18 per cent, compared to 22 per cent across the economy as a whole.
  • Only 52 per cent (down from 70 per cent in 1992) of care workers say they are satisfied with their pay, compared to 62 per cent (from 64 per cent in 1992) of other low-paid workers. This is likely because the ‘pay premium’ that care workers once enjoyed has deteriorated – the real hourly pay gap between care workers and cleaners has fallen from £2.70 in 2008 to 90p by 2025.
  • In 2025, care workers with at least five years of experience in the sector could only expect to earn 7p more an hour than those with less than one year’s experience, highlighting a lack of pay progression.
  • Job quality issues are material for recruitment and retention. Over one-third (35 per cent) of care providers said better pay outside the sector was the main cause of staff leaving in 2024, while three-in-ten (28 per cent) said it was the main difficulty finding new staff. And in 2024-25, care workers who received training had turnover rates one-fifth below those with no training recorded.
  • Non-compliance with labour market rules is high in social care, with an estimated 21,300 care workers paid less than the minimum wage (or 22 per cent of care workers paid at or below the wage floor).

Recommendations

  • To ensure that the ASCNB gets off the ground quickly, the Government’s overarching approach should be in the spirit of pragmatism and testing what works as the agreement evolves over time.
  • The worker and employer representatives with seats at the negotiating table should be required to consult widely to ensure that the FPA represents the diverse voice of the sector.
  • The FPA should initially focus on frontline carers working in the private sector, who are at the sharp end of poor pay and conditions.
  • The Government should start by focusing on a set of top priorities that includes pay, progression and training. Future agreements should be open to considering wider terms and conditions.
  • The new Fair Work Agency should take on a greater role than currently planned by the Government and enforce any elements of the FPA where there is a clear-cut distinction between compliance and non-compliance.

Further reading

Care to negotiate?
Making a success of the Adult Social Care Negotiating Body
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Charlie McCurdy, Melanie Simms, Hannah Slaughter
Unfair dismissal – Day One Frights
The Government should keep but reduce ‘qualifying periods’ for unfair dismissal protection
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Nye Cominetti
Calculating the Real Living Wage for London and the rest of the UK: 2025
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Nye Cominetti, Louise Murphy

https://doi.org/10.63492/ykx616

Charlie McCurdy
Charlie McCurdy Economist
Melanie Simms
Melanie Simms Research Associate
Hannah Slaughter
Hannah Slaughter Senior Economist