The worst year ever? Or only the second worst?

On first glance, figures for the 2024/25 year end in the Hospice UK Financial Benchmarking, supported by db associates, indicate an improvement on last year. The deficit amongst participants was down from £19m to £9m. Or, to put it another way, only the second worst year ever financially for the hospice sector.

But these figures are distorted positively by two factors. Firstly, a large surplus one hospice has recorded due to income raised for a capital campaign. Secondly, one-off money also for capital purposes received by English hospices from the Government. The exact impact of the latter would require a lot of detailed work to ascertain. 

The combined impact of these factors means that it in reality, 2024/25 was probably actually the worst ever year for the sector. The continued trend in hospices having to reduce their services is evidence of this.

With the national insurance rise now in place and examples of commissioners making arbitrary and ill-founded reductions in hospices funding, witness Mountbatten Hospice, the outlook for the current year is not great.

The only bright point is that income from fundraising and retail continues to rise. Indeed, the former has grown by 22% in the last two years and the latter by 14%. 

But even if that growth continues, that is highly unlikely to be nearly enough to cover the NI increases.

There is still more cloud than silver lining.