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ASHE: 2019 provisional results – care costs continue to rise driven by National Living Wage increases

25 November 2019

The latest ASHE figures (the final figures for 2018 and the provisional figures for 2019) were published on 29 October 2019. DWF Forensic update their annual review to highlight the key data relevant to catastrophic injury claims handling and the impact on the next round of annual periodical payments due in December 2019, as a result of increasing care costs.

The big picture

A summary of the annual increases included in the ONS release is reproduced below for ease of reference, based on Figure 10 of the 2019 ASHE release. The average increase for all full time employees is 2.9%. The corresponding increases for inflation are CPI 2.1% and RPI 3.0% for the 12 months ended April 2019.

The increases for lower-earning occupations are likely to have been driven by the increases in the National Living Wage of 4.4% in April 2018 affecting pay in the year to April 2019.

The links to the tables are as follows:

The individual Tables numbered 1 to 28 can be found here, although they are not listed in numerical order. Selecting a particular table will take you to a page with links to all the figures published for that table from 1997 (or such later date as the table started) to the 2019 provisional figures. The figures for each year are opened as a zip file which gives access to all the sub-tables (for example 14.1a, 14.1b to 14.12). Clicking on the required sub-table will open the corresponding excel file. The tabs along the bottom of the spreadsheet further split the figures between All, Male, Female, Full-time and Part-time.

Alternatively the Statistical Bulletin includes an overview of the changes from the 2018 to 2019 figures. To access the results tables click on the green button "View all data used in this statistical bulletin" to bring up the same Tables 1 to 28 as accessed from the above link (although again not in numerical order).

Care costs and periodical payments

The ASHE table relevant to indexing the majority of periodical payment orders (most of which relate to care costs) is Table 26.5a SOC 6145 & 6146 (previously SOC 6115).

The Table 26 dataset can be found here. The figures are shown below together with the percentage increase over the final 2018 figures:

Care costs showed a 3.83% increase in the median hourly rate in the year to April 2019. In the same period CPI was 2.1% and RPI was 3.0%.

The impact of Brexit on earnings growth is still uncertain. However, any restriction on the free movement of workers may result in higher care costs due to a reduced pool of carers with fewer numbers being recruited from the EU.

The increases are behind the overall 5.0% increase in Caring, Leisure and Other Service Occupations (Table 1, above). With the majority of periodical payments linked to the 80th percentile many annual payments due in December 2019 will increase by 3.49%, compared to 4.08% in 2018, ahead of CPI and RPI:

DWF PPO administration

DWF Forensic offers an Annual Update service for periodical payment orders to calculate the next payment due and can also review earlier payment calculations if there are queries over the amounts paid. Read more

Contact

For further information please contact:

Helen Walters, Forensic Accountant on 020 7645 9631 or at Helen.Walters@dwf.law

Lauren Highton, Forensic Accountant on 0161 537 1453 or at Lauren.Highton@dwf.law

Further Reading