Adult social care spend per adult, by region, 2024/25
English councils spent £543 per adult resident on adult social care in 2024/25, net of income: £25.15bn in all. By region, the figure ran from £512 in London to £589 in the North West.
£543Net spend per adult, England, 2024/25
By Institrace, Churchtown Media Ltd. Published .
The figures as a table
| Region | Per adult | Net expenditure | Councils | Papers with the words | Per 10 councils | Share of papers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| North West | £589 | £3,460m | 23 of 24 | 4,728 | 2,056 | 12.3% |
| South West | £570 | £2,724m | 15 | 2,400 | 1,846 | 11.4% |
| North East | £558 | £1,233m | 12 | 1,844 | 1,844 | 13.3% |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | £546 | £2,453m | 15 | 2,441 | 2,034 | 11.7% |
| East of England | £544 | £2,826m | 11 | 517 | 862 | 11.0% |
| South East | £539 | £4,116m | 19 | 4,068 | 2,260 | 13.7% |
| West Midlands | £520 | £2,522m | 14 | 2,283 | 1,756 | 11.7% |
| East Midlands | £518 | £2,093m | 10 | 1,956 | 2,173 | 14.6% |
| London | £512 | £3,722m | 33 | 6,470 | 1,961 | 11.9% |
| England | £543 | £25,150m | 152 of 153 | 26,707 | 1,949 | 12.4% |
Findings
In 2024/25, the 152 English councils with adult social care duties and a published figure spent £25.15bn net on adult social care, in MHCLG's revenue outturn data. That is £543 for each of the 46.4 million residents aged 18 and over in their areas. Council spending records are on Money.
Spend per adult was £589 in the North West, £570 in the South West and £558 in the North East. It was £512 in London, £518 in the East Midlands and £520 in the West Midlands. Yorkshire and The Humber (£546), the East of England (£544) and the South East (£539) were within £5 of England. The South East had the largest total, £4.12bn across 19 councils.
Councils vary more than regions. The middle half of the 152 councils spent between £489 and £595 per adult. Kent spent £721.1m, or £560 per adult; Birmingham £479.3m, or £535; Manchester £288.0m, or £626. Every council's figure is in the council table (CSV).
In cash terms, spend per adult in England rose from £380 in 2019/20 to £543 in 2024/25, up 43%. In 2024/25 prices, using HM Treasury's GDP deflator, it rose from £470, up 15%. Every region rose in real terms, from 12% in the East of England and London to 20% in Yorkshire and The Humber. Each year's figures are in the regional table (CSV).
Institrace holds 215,775 papers dated in 2024/25 from 137 of these councils. Of these, 26,707 hold the words adult, social and care together with overspend, overspent or pressure: 1,949 papers per 10 councils, or 12.4% of the papers. By region, the share ran from 11.0% in the East of England to 14.6% in the East Midlands. These are counts of papers using those words, not a measure of how serious any pressure was. Committee papers are explained in How to read UK council minutes.
Cumberland has no 2024/25 figure in MHCLG's data, so it is not in the North West or England figures. Its 2024/25 statement of accounts shows £84.0m of net expenditure on Adult Social Care & Housing. That line is on an accounting basis and includes housing, so it does not compare with the figures above.
Method and sources
Spend is net current expenditure on adult social care, as councils report it to MHCLG in the revenue outturn return, for April 2024 to March 2025: spending on the service less the income it brings in, as MHCLG defines it. The figures are from MHCLG's Revenue Outturn multi-year data set, updated 28 September 2026.
The councils counted are the 153 with adult social care duties in 2024/25: 32 London boroughs and the City of London, 36 metropolitan districts, 63 unitary authorities including the Isles of Scilly, and 21 county councils. 152 have a figure. Shire district councils are left out, as the county council holds the duty in their areas; their lines total £14.7m. Earlier years count the councils of that year: 151 in 2019/20 and 2020/21, 152 in 2021/22 and 2022/23, and 153 from 2023/24.
Each council is placed in one of England's nine regions with ONS's lookups of local authority districts to counties and unitary authorities, and to regions (April 2025). MHCLG lists Barnsley and Sheffield under their codes from before April 2025. Before their reorganisations, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Cumbria, North Yorkshire and Somerset county councils are counted in the regions of the councils that replaced them.
Adults are residents aged 18 and over in ONS mid-year population estimates for council areas, released 29 July 2026: those aged 16 and over, less those aged 16 and 17. Each financial year uses the estimate for its middle: mid-2024 for 2024/25, back to mid-2019 for 2019/20. For 2024/25, the North West and England figures leave Cumberland out of both spend and population.
Real terms are in 2024/25 prices, using HM Treasury's GDP deflator at market prices published on 1 October 2026 (Quarterly National Accounts, 30 September 2026).
The 152 council figures add to £25,149.8m, and the nine regions add to England's figure in every year. MHCLG's England total for 2024/25 is £25,277.3m. The difference is £14.7m of shire district lines and £112.7m in MHCLG's unitary authority total that is not shown against any council; MHCLG's release says its England totals include estimates for councils whose data had not arrived. From 2019/20 to 2023/24, the council and district figures match MHCLG's England total to within £10,000.
Papers: every paper on a council's Institrace record, dated from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025, whose text or title holds the words adult, social and care, and at least one of overspend, overspent or pressure, in any form sharing the stem (overspending, pressures). The words can sit anywhere in the paper. The counts come from the full-text index, as search counts them. 137 councils have papers dated in the year, and per 10 councils uses those councils. Councils publish, and Institrace holds, different numbers of papers, so the share of papers is shown too. Figures for each council are in the council table (CSV).
Cumberland: MHCLG's individual council data for 2024/25 (updated 11 June 2026, 410 of 411 authorities) and its multi-year data set (updated 28 September 2026) have no adult social care figure for Cumberland. The figure in the findings is from the Comprehensive Income and Expenditure Statement in Cumberland Council's 2024/25 statement of accounts, approved by its Audit and Risk Committee on 11 March 2026: Adult Social Care & Housing, gross expenditure £186.4m, income £102.4m, net £84.0m. The auditor's report of 13 March 2026 gives no opinion on these accounts, under the national backstop date for local audits. For 2023/24 the same accounts line was £84.1m net, while MHCLG's data has £104.4m for adult social care, which shows how far the two bases differ. The figure is not in any total or average in this report.
- MHCLG, Revenue outturn multi-year data setOpen Government Licence v3.0. Updated 28 September 2026. Adult social care net current expenditure, 2019/20 to 2024/25.
- MHCLG, Revenue expenditure and financing 2024 to 2025: individual local authority data, outturnOpen Government Licence v3.0. Updated 11 June 2026, 410 of 411 authorities.
- MHCLG, Revenue expenditure and financing 2024 to 2025: second releaseOpen Government Licence v3.0. Published 11 June 2026. England totals and how they are estimated.
- ONS, Local Authority District to County and Unitary Authority (April 2025) Lookup in EW (V2)Open Government Licence v3.0. Updated 11 August 2025.
- ONS, Local Authority District to Region (April 2025) Lookup in EN (V2)Open Government Licence v3.0. Updated 11 August 2025.
- ONS, Population estimates for local authorities by single year of age (Nomis)Open Government Licence v3.0. Mid-year estimates to mid-2025, released 29 July 2026. Mid-2019 to mid-2024 used.
- HM Treasury, GDP deflators at market prices, and money GDP, September 2026Open Government Licence v3.0. Published 1 October 2026.
- Cumberland Council, Statement of Accounts 2024/25, with the auditor's reportApproved 11 March 2026. Comprehensive Income and Expenditure Statement, page 36.
Cite this report
Institrace (2026), Adult social care spend per adult, by region, 2024/25, https://www.institrace.co.uk/reports/adult-social-care-spend-by-region, accessed 5 October 2026.